Moori led the horsecart herself, up the steep slope of the back access drive to the mainhouse's delivery door. Gregory was there squatting on the stoop sipping a Liberty Ale and it was not even noon—looking a bit bemused, she thought. Hmph.
Her hair had sagged into sweaty bronze-red tentacles about her shoulders. She tied the horse's leader to the ring post, gave the hitch knot a yank and a piece of the leather came away in her hand. She snapped: "Pig-fuckin'-poke bastard!"
Gregory was on his feet. "Lemme help with those sacks." He grabbed a corner of burlap but Moori stopped him, a firm hand pushing his wrist away.
"Noooo," she said emphatically. Gregory read the tension in her voice, resentment. "As I explained in the kitchen lass night and in the out garden—ho—two days ago, Big Tom says you are not to even lift yer own willie ta pee. You're the recuperatin' patient, he says, though the truth is that he wants not ta be drawn and quartered by yer buddy Fel Guinness and the other new mainlanders." She muttered the last part.
Gregory had decided against looking hurt anymore. He returned to the stoop, where he picked up his ale and tipped it back. He sniffed. "Ya, okay. But she's your house too, an' I figure this ta be part your desire as well."
Moori undid the knot, pulled more of the leather through the ring, and redid the hitch in exasperated tugs.
"Ya know what these vegetables are costing now?" she said, sweeping her hand at the cart. "And I say this not just 'cause I never had to haul the deliveries before. The produce here was never so up with the centimes. We quit sending the mainland the red-leggers to work the farms, an' the farms can't pull in the crops like they used to. And now the produce they send back to us costs twice what it did before. While we're makin' pig-poke for money!"
Gregory gulped the last of the bottle. "Thass what's bothering you? The price of beans?"
She pushed her hair away from her face defiantly, and Gregory had simultaneous thoughts: She was quite beautiful. But even with his protected, non-working status on Thomas Island, Big Tom probably would slice out his liver just for the thought.
That sexual pipe dream led him quickly to a more serious memory, as if his brain had tightened up a few notches, his mind imploded a few degrees. Tym. He saw her stretched in the shadowy hammock asleep—how many weeks ago?—the stress of a beseiged life absent for a moment from her smooth face. Lips pressed together in sleepy consternation. Small breasts, firm as fists.
The clean and vivid lust of his once-impaired mind. Ah, that was the quandary. Had it been the ignorance of a dimmed consciousness, or was it a valid, lustful memory being tempered now by the return of cautious human reason?
Gregory looked at Moori again—beautiful, yes, but pathetic somehow in her sweaty desperation over the mere hauling of vegetables. He turned through the door into the large pantry, where he hoped to find another ale.
He lifted the lid of the icebox and turned his head aside at the stale and dank odor of the warming chest. Across the metal bottom of the box little nuggets of ice were quickly shrinking and disappearing down the drain hole. Four Liberty Ales stood in the puddle at the bottom, their labels slipping down the glass. The lettuce and green bell peppers probably were okay, but the eggs in the wire rack would not last the night. He didn't know about the cheese.
He knew the routine well, although he was supposed to forget. He was houseguest now, no longer house boy. He grabbed the two buckets beside the chest, went downstairs to the ice machine at Big Tom's bar, and filled them.
The door to the downstairs bathroom was ajar, and whimpering noises came from inside. Gregory pushed at the knob, a heavy brass fixture the shape of a woman's breast. Little Tom was hunched over the round porcelain sink, a wire brush in his hand—the one Gregory had once used to clean the outdoor grill. A patch of Little Tom's brown-dyed forearm was rubbed raw.
The heir to a crumbling Caribbean kingdom turned his red eyes toward the intruder.
Gregory jabbed a finger toward the near-bleeding skin and said, "Ho. Now you black and you red."
Little Tom's nose was twitching. He took the nub of a hand-rolled cigarette from the edge of the soap dish and sucked hard. "Gregory, do you smell something?" he asked weakly.
Gregory sighed. "You're in a crapper, poo-bah. You're bound ta pick up somethin' foul. But all I smell is ganja. Why don't you give it all a rest? The ganja. The skin, hey. Give it a rest, too."
Little Tom was naked, skin an even coffee color. Although Pec-Pec had denied darkening the young seaman's skin on purpose, Gregory preferred to think of it as an intentional prank. But Little Tom's infections did seem to have subsided. Gregory pointed and asked, "So how's your willie doin'?"
"Good anuff. Works."
"All them holes, I thought we might use you for a lawn sprinkler."
Little Tom kicked the door closed in his face.
Ho. This whole house is pig-poked—no humor left, Gregory said to himself. He went back upstairs with the filled buckets, removed one of the ales from the box, then dumped the ice in. Gregory arranged the buckets where they had been before, hoping no one would notice he had performed a service for the house. He hesitated, then pulled a second ale out of the ice and shut the lid.
He took the ales up the stairway to the second tier and walked down the polished hallway past the quiet rooms. Ashtrays overflowed. In the smaller bedrooms, little used since Big Tom's other wives left him, the closet doors gaped open and abandoned bedclothes still lay in rumpled heaps. Most of the women had returned to trug work on Cell Island; a couple of others caught a tug for Chautown. They were a blur to Gregory, a half dozen sweet faces he recalled from the time before Pec-Pec had healed him. He shrugged—he found it less than sad. They had all been trugs before, and were hardly more than that in the service of Big Tom.
Change of assignments, that's all. Gregory had seen many changes of assignment in the Revolution.
Ironically, Moori seemed to miss the other wives more than Big Tom did. Gregory sucked at one of the ales as he walked. He wondered if Moori had had a lover among Big Tom's "lesser" wives. He had heard of that. Sometimes, in a house full of women. . ..
The end of the hall opened onto the veranda, the same one that curved past Big Tom's master bedroom. Out here, the air was moving ever so slightly, like the whisk of a passing bird, but Gregory was thankful for the little breeze. He propped the two ales on the rail and watched the shipyard below. He picked out Big Tom by his squat form—strutting about, waving his arms, having to supervise the yard himself now with such a tight payroll.
If Gregory squinted his eyes, he could imagine the hull filled in the rest of the way, the ship taking form at the waterfront. It seemed absurdly huge, and Gregory thought of the mythological beasts called elephants—those cumbersome creatures Rosenthal Webb had told him about. The old revolutionary had told him many a tale to alleviate the boredom as they had crossed the western sectors—how long ago? two years?—to kill the Monitor. Like an elephant. Gregory imagined that a ship of this size would be about that graceful.
Four of the dozen men from the new government were down in the shipyard, as always, observing the construction, making Big Tom uncomfortable. They were a surly lot—cliquish, quiet, bunked out each night up the hill in those cells that had once held the red-leggers. How odd, Gregory considered: These men had been as much a part of the Revolution as himself. Yet he had never known them, except for Fel Guinness, and felt little kinship. He wanted to tell them he had been part of the band that actually had slain the Monitor. He wanted them to know, to suddenly snap into reverence like a soldier grunt stumbling across a general. But he could not think of a modest way of bringing up the subject.
Out far beyond the harbor, two low and sleek skimmers eased their way east. Rafers, Gregory figured—the new long sailcraft they seemed to be favoring these days over their traditional catamarans. Big Tom had pulled in most of his own skimmers, and what few crews remained in his employ spent most of their time just patrolling the perimeter of Thomas Island.
Gregory watched the new Rafer skimmers until they melted into the horizon. Hmph. That new design—like some hell-bent sea swan. Where had they learned to hammer out yachts like that? They were certainly nothing that ever crossed Big Tom's drawing board—not his style at all. And where would they be getting their timbers for such craft? Pirated lumber from the mainland?
Gregory spat over the rail. Depression: Tastes like a mouthful of brackish water. He had seen many men damaged in the service of the Revolution—Rosenthal Webb himself was missing a fistful of fingers. Did it always feel this way—after? Like a lone duck hurled aside by a hurricane? Directionless, loveless.
(Webb had warned him once: "Careful not to follow that pènis of yers too often. I see that it changes direction more 'n a weather vane.)
It had seemed just a few minutes, but both ale bottles were empty. Gregory thought of wandering down to Sanders's Shebeen—the pub would be fairly empty this early. A long afternoon of lazy thoughts. . ..
No. He stepped back from the rail. Time for a walk, he decided. A project. Exercise. This boredom, this inability to contribute to the working of the island, was going to drown him in ale. He would. . ..
His eyes darted about.
He would. . ..
The garden below: pebbled paths, fruit trees, shrubbery growing ragged, the locked shed.
He would. . .open the shed.
Big Tom had specifically forbidden it. Only the old merchant himself could go in there—and he did, almost daily. One of the recently departed wives joked that he was having sex in there with Five-Finger Rose—his right hand. "Wat else 'ud it be?" she asked. "He ain't got it up no other time! Haw."
Ah. A daring idea. He turned back down the hallway to the master bedroom.
There were secrets to a house known only to the person who had spent a long time emptying its waste baskets, hanging up tunics carelessly tossed aside, sweeping up the remnants of the last night's revelry. Gregory pulled at the double oak doors of Big Tom's wardrobe, let them creak softly as they always did, and listened for reaction from anywhere in the house. There was none.
A half-dozen of Big Tom's finer tunics lay on the floor of the wardrobe, a tangle of silk. Gregory sighed and leaned in. Across the top inside panel of the cabinet was a row of keys hanging from finishing nails. Back door, front door, office, hospital supply room, Sanders's pub, garden shed. He took the last key and closed the doors again.
At Big Tom's dresser he stopped to peer at the little looking glass mounted on a lacquered driftwood base. Gregory pushed the blond curls away from his forehead and studied the pink and crooked scar. He thought through a now-very-familiar conumdrum, a recurring daytime nightmare: I can not say for sure that my mind is healed. Is that because it actually is healed? Or because it is not healed?
He touseled his hair back over the scar and turned for the door.
The shed was oddly aromatic, the lushly pleasing rot-smell familiar to plant tenders. Gregory shoved the door closed behind him, the top hinge being relaxed enough to make it drag the ground. He hadn't brought the lantern hanging outside, and it was possible he wouldn't need it. Reeds of light criss-crossed the interior—from the cracks around the door, from slipped shingles, from the paint peeling off the single window.
As he stepped down the alley between the bins and the bales his disappointment grew. It seemed to be a very normal garden shed—soils and clay pots, dozens of seed packets sorted out into the slots of an old post office letter rack.
Oh, but here was an odd thing. To his left, atop a pile of manure sacks, sat a cat-looking beast. It had been stuffed by an amateur taxidermist perhaps two decades back. Stitches showed at each shoulder joint. The lips were split and curling back into a ghastly sneer. Most of the hair had worn away from the face. The taxidermist had used large dark marbles instead of natural-looking eyes, and the effect was as mesmerizing as it was horrifying.
As he stared, the voice came out of nowhere: "Gregory," it said softly, and a chill howled up his spine.
He leapt back from the creature. The corner of his eye caught the glare where the shed door had been pushed open. He had been discovered, and his heart hammered.
The voice came again, louder, this time a question: "Gregory?" And he saw then, silhouetted by the blinding sunlight, the unmistakable form of Moori standing in the door. It was she that had spoken, not the frayed cat. Still, his veins throbbed audibly. Perhaps Moori would not tell Big Tom he had stolen into the shed. Gregory tried to retrace his reasoning: What did he think he might find that would have been worth being de-balled by the old slaver?
Moori pushed the door closed behind her and walked hesitantly toward him, head nodded. She was mumbling, and her words were punctuated by sorrowful gasps: ". . .can't do it anymore. . .Big Tom, he'll hardly speak to me. Nothin' but powder, bourbon and that pig-pokin' boat. . .." She stopped just short of touching him, head still down, thick red hair brushing his chest.
"Your friends?" She looked up, chin trembling. "Can you help me get. . .he'd kill me. . .get to Chautown?"
Gregory watched his own hand rise slowly, in awe of the motion as if he were detatched from it. His fingers combed through the outermost strands of her hair, lifting them into a narrow beam of light.
"You didn't leave the vegetables out in the sun," he said, "did you?"
Moori's chin stopped quivering, and she shook her head a bemused "no." The rest was a spontaneous combustion. No tease, no parry, no hints or invitations or calculating give-and-take. Their mouths pressed together urgently. Gregory's hands slipped easily into her loose blouse and found her breasts sweat-moist. Moori pried open the military clip of his belt and tore open his fly buttons in one motion. She sighed desperately and ducked her head to give him a quick and delicate tonguing—a promise. Gregory stood helplessly in the dark, hands lightly stroking the corners of the mouth that needed no guidance—knew exactly what to do.
When Moori stood she led him to the rail of the open peat moss bin. Propped on the ancient two-by-four, she hiked her skirt and pulled him to her, a hand on each side of his buttocks. Gregory obliged, disbelieving. The danger seemed to linger only distantly—in a cobwebbed corner of the shed like some banished ghost. He ran a stroking hand under her thigh and found more moisture. Moori pulled him backward and together they fell into the earth-smell of the peat moss.
Gregory supposed he had been drowsing. The slivers of light knifing through the dusty air had dimmed. Moori seemed to be asleep, naked in the soft grime of the peat moss. The tip of her nose, one cheek, and her rump were covered in gold and brown flecks. What a mess she was. An alluring, warm, satisfying mess.
It was an odor that first stopped his heart. The sour reek of bourbon. And then Gregory heard the scritch-scratch of someone shuffling by. The shed suddenly felt very, very small. Gregory tried to remember: Had Big Tom been wearing his shin blades today? Probably—he usually did. Then he thought of the merchant's powerful red hands, and then of the garroting tree just out in the garden.
Gregory heard Big Tom's voice boom, almost a ritual chant, "Cantilou, ha, Cantilou, Cantilou, good evening."
The reply that came—from where?—was a horrifying, high-pitched keening that goaded the old merchant: "Soooo, how goes the Government work? The ship building? Now that you have no flesh to harvest? Eh, pirate? Eh, Government man?"
Moori was beginning to stir, responding to the voices, and Gregory carefully placed the palm of one hand over her mouth. Beyond that, he dared only to move his head the two inches necessary to see under the bin rail, enough to see Big Tom lifting knife-loads of powder to his nose in the dim light. Gregory's suspicion was correct, and he felt ill: Big Tom was speaking both parts—his own voice and the imagined rantings of the cat beast.
"Gumment, pah, the new Gumment," came Big Tom's natural voice. "It may a commissioned the big sea skimmer, but they'll not have her unless I'm aboard as captain. Hah."
"Or, they'll use yer ample body for trollin' bait first voyage."
Gregory watched as the slaver, weaving over by the manure sacks, paused for another snort of powder. A trail of white now streaked down his moustache and beard, and he held the knife aloft dramatically as his face brightened. "Trolling bait! That's what we will have, Cantilou, when I find who it is that broke into the garden shed. Thank you—trolling bait. Did you see who it was Cantilou?"
"Is not for me to say," came the whine, "but a careful rapscallion would have locked the shed after he left. . .."
And Gregory stiffened when he heard Big Tom complete the thought in his own voice as he turned toward the peat moss bin. ". . .unless he has not had time to leave at all!"
At the rail, Big Tom propped each elbow and let the knife dangle casually between thumb and forefinger. His red eyes darted back and forth between his captives, and his mouth under that bush of beard fell into a somber O-shape. He smelled more of whiskey than Sanders's Shebeen itself. He whispered, "Moori."
Gregory sat forward, still naked and ready to bolt. Moori was fully awake now and pulling on her blouse and skirt—somewhat foolishly, Gregory thought, as they would be no help against a maniac's blade.
All ebullience had drained from Big Tom's face, and he suddenly looked very old. That's what it looks like to watch a man die, Gregory told himself. The merchant's lips began to quiver. Shoulders hunched, he about-faced and returned to the stuffed cat. He cradled the long-dead animal in his arms, fell to his knees on the dirt floor and wailed in a crazed mixture of adult voice and soprano Cantilou.
Gregory was over the rail, trousers in one hand and tugging Moori with the other. When he glimpsed her face, Gregory thought there was a hint of glee—could she have planned it this way? No. Maybe.
They sprinted over the white stones through the twilight garden, clothes fluttering under their arms. At the edge of the garden Gregory hesitated: Up the hill to the protection of Fel Guinness? Staying on the island would eventually mean a confrontation with Big Tom, perhaps a bloody one. Gregory wanted to live, and Big Tom had to finish the Government's ship. Better to leave the island altogether. After a moment's consideration, Gregory sprinted up the porch of the mainhouse, dragging Moori.
"He'll find us here," she said.
"Two minutes," he answered, breathless. "Grab some things. Clothes, cash, trading metal. A weapon?"
Big Tom's pitiful wailing pealed up and down Crown Mountain in the dying daylight. Moori looked sadly toward the garden shed. "Okay," she said, "but the Government boys—your boys—took all of his bangers."
When they reached the docks all that remained of the sun was a strip of crimson along the horizon, a slice of melon lying on its side. Gregory wore a small backpack; Moori lugged a stuffed satchel in each hand. The shipyard just east was quiet now, the musclers, the wood whits, Bishop, Bark and the rest of the island having retired to Sanders's for the evening. The mammoth ship-in-the-making cut a mountainous silhouette against the harbor.
But Gregory was looking for another craft, and much to his relief it was lolling, low and long and double masted, in a berth near the end of the platform. The boat was dark and the gangplank hauled in, so Gregory pulled the cord wrapped twice around the near piling. A high-pitched bell tinkled on deck, and a voice responded, thick with Southland twang: "Lay off a that son—pull yer own rope."
The tip of a fat cigar then glowed bright on deck, and Moori pointed as she made out the form: a four-foot man in a folding chair, feet propped on the backboard rail.
The little man's bare feet fell to the deck in a lazy whump-whump. He stood and sauntered, stretching, cigar clenched in his teeth. As the dwarf neared, Gregory made out a face familiar from those foggy house boy days: a wide, oversized head, a scarred and flattened nose, as if the cartilage had been whittled out by a backwoods surgeon.
"Steinbrenner," Gregory said.
The man nodded his large head. "Gregory, Moori, 'lo. Something wrong with the potatoes I brung ya?" he drawled.
"Not at all," Moori whispered. "We need your help." She glanced back down the dock. Big Tom had ceased his bawling, leaving all of Crown Mountain and its dwindling population eerily silent—save for the occasional hoo-hah emanating from Sanders's pub. God knows what Big Tom was up to now. "We need to leave the island immediately—you must take us. To the mainland, preferably Chautown."
Steinbrenner snorted. "Ah. A lady used to havin' her way."
Gregory unfolded a sheet of white paper and handed it to the produce boatman. Steinbrenner snapped it open and squinted at the writing. "Mmmm. . .by authority of the Revolutionary Council. . .please afford all courtesies necessary for the. . .mmm. . .signed Rosenthal Webb, chief of Revolutionary active forces." He stretched over the rail and handed the letter back to Gregory. "And just who's this Mr. Rosenthal of yours an' why should I give a pig poke?"
"The new Government—you been to Chautown lately, you've heard," Gregory replied.
"Rumors is what I heard, ya. A few toughs strung up some farmers—same musclers what got a strangle on Big Tom here, made 'im stop the red-legger trade." Steinbrenner shook his head. "Bad year for Big Tom. No wonder he doin' so much a the powder."
Gregory shrugged off his backpack and unbuttoned the top. "Okay," he said, tossing the boatman a drawstring bag the size of an orange, "whatcha say to this?"
Steinbrenner snatched the bag out of the air with his left hand. He broke the string in his teeth and shuffled out part of its contents—large, ornately engraved coins.
"They's fourteen of 'em there, worth close to 10,000 centimes," Gregory said.
"But this's Rafer brass."
"Man like you does all sorts of trade—would know how to make use of 'em. No? Let's pitch off now."
The produce man snorted and counted the disks twice. Then he threw his weight onto his gangplank and teetered it over the rail until it slammed onto the dock. Gregory and Moori undid the lashings and boarded.
"Moori, you're running now from Big Tom, like all his other wives did." There was reproach in the seaman's voice. "If thass so, not a word to anyone about how ya made off."
They were center-harbor before Steinbrenner had all of his sails set. Moori approached him at the helm.
"How do you know how much a the powder Big Tom's been using?" she asked.
The captain grunted and kept his eyes straight ahead. "Young lady, you sure I shouldn't let ya off with the trugs at Cell Island?"
Gregory was leaning on the starboard rail, somberly watching Thomas Island fall away into the darkness. "Steinbrenner's a produce man," he said. "Where do ya think Big Tom gets the stuff, 'cept from the likes of him?"