Bitter Eden (53 page)

"Where'd you get that?"

"It was given to me."

The man picked it up.

Tut it down," Peter said.

"I want to see it*

Tut it down."

"Look at this, mates. He's got somethin goin we don't know about."

Peter stood up. Roush was his equal in height, and one of the few convicts Peter couldn't intimidate merely by size and reputation. He put his hand out for the scarf. Roush danced away, waving the scarf and laughing. Peter started after him. The man darted back, laughing loudly and drawing the guard's attention. Peter turned and sat down on the rock again, leaning forward, relaxed. His hands were folded in front of him.

Roush stopped his prancing, watching Peter with canny wariness. Then he came forward, holding the scarf by two fingers.

"What's the matter, Berean? Don't you want the pretty scarf?"

"I want it," Peter said quietly.

"Come and get it"

"No. You give it to me."

"Like this?" Roush darted in, lowering the scarf so it touched Peter's cheek. Peter didn't move. "Hahl

Like this? Or this!" Roush said, thoroughly enjoying himself as he bobbed in and out, toward and away from Peter.

Watching Roush's moving feet, Peter got the timing, then moved like a springing cat, thrusting upward with his clasped hands.

He caught Roush directly under his jaw, snapping his head back. The man lay dazed on the ground, shaking his head to clear it. Peter bent to pick up the scarf. Roush kicked him just below the rib cage. Scarf in hand Peter whirled, jumping on Roush, pummeling until his fists were covered with blood.

The guards looked on with moderate interest. The two men were a fair match. If they came out with a few bruises, it meant nothing. Money changed hands between them as each chose his favorite. They did nothing until Roush lay motionless and Peter continued to pound his fists into him.

Then both guards ran, shouting orders for Peter to stop. He did not hear; he would not have obeyed if he had. His eyes were crazed, his powerful body taut and flexed as one muscle. His fists moved like pistons, beating and pounding Roush's inert body.

"Stop him! He's killing Roush!" a convict shouted.

Neither guard was willing to touch him in the frenzy he was in.

"Do something, you bloody bastards! He's killin' mi!

The guard raised his rifle and pointed it at Peter's head. The other pushed the rifle aside. Taking his own weapon and turning it butt forward, he brought it down on Peter's shoulder. Peter's back straightened, but he did not get off Roush. The guard hit him again and again, finally driving the rifle butt into Peter's cheek and knocking him off balance.

"Get him now!" the guard shouted. "Tie his hands. Good God, be quick before he starts again."

Peter was locked in a gaol cell. The scarf was still crumpled in his hand, once more stained and bloodied.

The chaplain came in an hour later. "Get on your knees."

Peter fell to his knees. He spent the night there, his mind blank, his back aching and straining until he was trembling from the effort to stay upright. The in-defatigible minister droned on reading passages from the Bible and his book of prayers. Intermittently he stopped, placing his hand on Peters clammy brow. "Repent."

"I repent."

"Beg forgiveness of the Lord God, thy Savior."

"I beg forgiveness."

The minister looked at the barred window and saw finally the first muted shades of dawn. "I have spent the night with you, sinner, doing my best to make you aware of your depravity. Your immortal soul has been so blackened by the influence of Lucifer you were driven to take the life of a fellow Christian, loved by the Almighty Father."

"He is dead?" Peter asked in a flat voice not really caring, except that he would hang if Roush died, and then it would be finished.

"He is not dead, but very nearly so. You have been blessed with another opportunity to release yourself from the vicious evil of your sinful life. Repent," he said, hand on Peter's brow again, waiting.

"Repent!" he repeated.

"I repent." Peters head was down so the minister would not see his eyes grow watery and think he had been touched either by God or Lucifer. "I repent," he said again, barely audible.

"Are you now willing to attend to the convictions of the Holy Spirit?"

"I am."

"May God see fit to bless your efforts to walk in holiness before the Lord. Fill the sense of vacuity of your mind with thoughts of Heavenly good."

The minister ended his night's vigil. He turned with gravity toward the watchful sentry. "Sin has a dreadful hold on this mans soul. He cannot keep his thoughts toward the Lord, but perhaps we can take some comfort in faith that this night has made him see the error of his ways. I shall speak to the commandant after I have seen the other man involved. Perhaps God will grant that a glimmer of blessed enlightenment shall come of this night's work."

The following morning Peter was taken to Grummet Rock. Grummet was one of several large rocks that dotted the area. Its dark craggy bulk protruded from the sea some distance from the mainland, solitary and stark. The guards shoved Peter ahead of them. He stood listlessly staring out at a flat slate ocean, drained of all thought and feeling. He paid little attention to the guards, but moved obediently when they ordered him. They fastened two iron rings connected by a short heavy chain around Peter's legs. In the middle of the chain was a leather strap, which split to^form a T, buckling around his waist. The entire contraption was affixed by another longer chain to an iron ring deeply set in the rock. Checking supplies from a list, they gave him an iron pot, and some wood and food rations for a week, then beleaguered him with tales of other men's experiences on Grummet Rock. Satisfied their assignment was duly discharged, they left him.

Solitary confinement was not given lightly, as it kept a convict from working. Its duration was never

less than one week and usually longer. It was used as a punishment only when flogging did not seem sufficient to quell the criminal spirit of a man.

To the layman and the uninitiated, it seemed hardly credible that there were cells into which sane men could be solitarily confined from which they would emerge idiots. But it was true. Grummet Rock was one of them. One recalcitrant convict was chained to Grummet Rock for two years; a forgotten man who finally learned to forget.

Either by mans design or nature's quirk, cell-like caves were gouged into the the rock side. It was into one of these Peter was put and left.

Solitary meant little to him the first few hours. He watched the slow massive movements of the sea, then became mesmerized by the smaller swells within the larger heaving motions. He lay back relaxing against the warmth of the rock, his attention turning to the sky as the morning sun crept upward.

Later he began to notice the heat of that sun. He walked around the rock as far as the chain would allow. The sun climbed higher. He removed his blue-striped prison shirt, then as the sun became merciless, put it on again. The surface of the dry rock glowed white. The sun blazed overhead shooting shards of blinding light off every wave. It beat down on his bare head, making his scalp prickle with sweat, then itch as it dried.

The few thoughts and memories that haltingly began to form in his weary mind withered and died in the suns unrelenting assault. Peter moved restlessly, searching his surroundings, for what he knew not. He covered his throbbing head with his hands. Unable to stand still, wanting shelter from the sun, he continued his wandering around the rock, like a captive animal moving as far as the chain would allow. The heat

made him irrationally angry. He attacked the chain, pulling on it in a determined rage to yank it from the rock. He was sweating, his head throbbing, his hands raw when he finally gave up, sinking to the hard, hot surface. He looked up into the painfully blue sky until his eyes hurt and teared. Alone on the rock there seemed to be nothing. He had no past. Living this day meant being consumed by a sun and a sky that had no end and no relation to man as he conceives living. To think of tomorrow was unendurable. To think at all was unendurable. He turned to his stomach, pressing his forehead against the hot surface, his eyes focusing mindlessly on the intricate grain of the rock. He fell asleep only to awaken from a dream that he was being branded again. The sun-hot metal of the irons burned into his ankles and wrists. Automatically he pulled at them, rubbing swollen welts from the heat and strain. Frustrated, feeling desperately trapped, he shouted obscenities at the sun and the sky. He stood on the rock screaming with an outraged soul until he had no voice left. Defeated and beaten, he crept inside to the cool dampness of the cave.

The heat of the day vanished so quickly Peter thought he had only imagined it. Darkness fell over the rock and the ocean blinded him to the possibility that anything existed outside himself and the rock. Throughout the night the wind howled, roaring over the rock. He was sleepless, shivering from fright and cold as he guarded the small fire that the guards had started for him. The cold wet winds made the fire flicker, sending mad, hideous shadows dancing about the cave walls.

Civilization was sheared from Peter. His disorientation was so complete he couldn't think what was real and what was not. Had he ever lived among people?

Had he? Or had he dreamed it? Was it part of the longing dreams that tortured him?

He was no longer sure. The enormity of his isolation on the rock filled his mind and terrorized his senses. The turbulent water had lost the sound of peaceful rhythm he had always associated with the sea. Wave after wind-driven wave thudded against the rock, showering water over the surface. The rock's surface was now black, its great bulk looking alive, its shiny slippery skin glowing in the darkness. Peter thought he could feel it move with the motion of the sea. Common sense told him he could see nothing outside the small golden circle of his fire, nor could he feel it move. But still he felt it, and his mind went mad imagining himself chained within the gaping mouth of a giant sea beast.

In the morning, with the sun gentle and reliable in the sky, he felt better, even able to laugh at himself for his self-created nightmare monsters. He felt foolish, as though he had reverted back to childhood days when as a little boy he would imagine goblins in the night shadows of his bedroom. But as the day wore on and the sun climbed to scorch him once more, and when his head began to pound with the heat, the goblins and monsters seemed more real than did his reasoned thinking. By afternoon despair had consumed him. He knew now what "alone" meant. It was not being lonely, nor was it merely being cut off from natural communication. It was this. It was being put on a solitary rock in the midst of a white watered sea beyond sight or sound of land or men. It was the greatest and deepest of all humiliations he had suffered. Thrust down on him was nature's total superiority to a lone man. He was less significant in the scheme of the universe than the rock on which he was

chained. And he was made aware of his insignificance day and night.

God had meant man to band with others of his kind. But Peter had been condemned to survive outside the family of man. And now he stood naked in the knowledge that he was nothing. He had been left to the wind and the elements, unwanted and undeserving of participation with humanity. To the civilized world he was as unnecessary as he was to nature. No one would gaze on him as they had when he was flogged on the triangles. Cruel though he had thought it then, their jeering curiosity had been a form of caring. They looked. They laughed at him. They exhorted his sinfulness. They had cared. Here, he was put away for no one to look at him, no one to care, no one to think of him, no one to know if he lived or died.

Far in the distance Peter could see whales periodically. The great shining black beasts were beautiful at first sight. But, as with all his surroundings, they soon became threatening and fearsome, accentuating his isolation on the rock.

That night his primitive imagination took hold of him again. Try as he would he couldn't keep hold of rational thought. He became certain the rock was being beaten away by the crashing angry sea. Every roaring sound became a piece of Grummet tumbling away into the ocean. In the pitch blank blackness of a starless night, he was sure there was nothing left but the small ledge of his cave. Cursing himself for his primitive fears, he cowered at the back of the cave afraid to go to its edge to prove his fears false.

The third day he spent his time outside the cave, not watching the movement of the water which now frightened him, but peering instead at the surface of the sea. He searched the horizon for anything that

moved, any sight that meant someone was near. He saw nothing all that day.

By nightfall he was claustrophobic and nearly hysterical. The monsters came nearer. The walls of the cave closed in on him, and the sea terrified him. He prayed that night, begging to be allowed to write the letters he had never written, pleading to be allowed to see another human being, promising to repent in any way anyone asked of him. He dredged up every sin of his life, hating himself, fearing that he had forgotten some evil of his character that would prevent him from being absolved. He cried and prayed throughout the night until the words he spoke were not words at all.

The fourth day was as empty as the preceding one. And he feared that God too had abandoned him. Not one ship was seen, no rowing boat, no man, no whale, nothing. Nothing. For as far as he could see there was nothing. He couldn't stop trembling. The blazing heat of the sun no longer bothered him. He didn't even realize it was there. He was cold so deep inside that no heat could touch him. He stared at the edge of the rock considering throwing himself over its side, no longer able to reason that it couldn't be done due to the chain that anchored him to the rock.

That night Peter felt an inner agony he couldn't begin to identify for it touched too deep within. He hurt physically and mentally for the presence of another human being. He could endure the knowledge of his worthlessness. His strength had no meaning for it was too puny to meet the challenge of wind, sea, or sun. His mind and language were useless for there was no one and nothing to understand. He needed someone to understand with a passion so deep and driven it was beyond thought. He needed someone in order to be real himself. He clawed at the sky, then at the cave