The Life of Hope (27 page)

Abram gave a brief half-smile. “Weather,” he answered simply, meaning that bad weather was on its way.

Troubled as he was, usually gloomy and brooding, Abram Skinner was of late a happier man. His daughters were healthy and robust creatures, cheerful and strong like their mother, and Abram also had a son, Ambrose, six months of age. (Ambrose Skinner died at age nine months.)

Adam made introductions. Abram nodded and formed in his mind a question. Thinking was more laborious for Skinner than any farm work; it was hard avoiding all the crevices of his psyche. “Hamlet,” he stated, as if giving his topic a title or subject heading. “Was he, in your opinion, truly suicidal?”

“Oh, yes!” answered John eagerly. “Life to him was a loathsome burden, a mantle as heavy as the moon.”

“And yet, and yet …” stammered Skinner, and then he took a deep breath to calm himself. “And yet I’ve seen performances where all of Hamlet’s dark musings seem somehow nothing … nothing other than … that is, nothing more than … than … cunning … artifice. Cunning artifice.” The voicing of that statement had actually caused Abram to perspire. “For instance, in Boston, I saw your brother’s Hamlet …”

John interrupted rudely. “I’ve no wish to discuss my brother, nor his laughable Hamlet.”

Abram turned once more to look at the earth; not out of embarrassment or anger, only because the earth would never interrupt rudely.

Abigal came into the field, Anne and Alice clinging to her apron strings, Ambrose a swaddled bundle in her arms. Both Adam and Abram smiled. John turned away, uninterested. This woman was pudgy, plain and completely clothed.

“Time for dinner,” Abigal announced. “Has anyone seen Lem and Sam?”

Adam nodded. “We saw them just a few minutes ago.”

“Did they have some spoons?”

“Spoons?”

“Martha says some spoons have gone missing from the kitchen.”

Adam and Abram exchanged glances. “Did Martha,” asked Adam, “prepare the day’s meal?”

“Yes,” said Abigal quickly, “and you two had better like it, or so help me …”

“For you, Sweet Abigal,” said Adam, “we would eat mud.”

“In fact,” added Abram, “I think we’d just as soon eat mud, wouldn’t we, Adam?”

The two men nodded. “Mud it is,” they informed a chuckling Abigal.

Anne and Alice, four and three years old respectively, were staring at the stranger with curiosity and some degree of malevolence. “Who are you?” demanded Anne.

“I am a Prince,” answered John, “from a faraway country. I rule there, and everyone is very happy.” John dropped to his knees in front of the little girls. “Would you like to come and live there?”

“No,” answered Anne.

“
NO
!” bellowed Alice, as loudly as she could.

“But there is magic there,” continued John, “and no one is sad.”

“No,” answered Anne.

“
NO
!” shrieked Alice.

“Very well.” John climbed to his feet. “There’s no room for you at any rate.”

“By the way, Abigal,” asked Adam, “have you seen Mary?”

“She’s in her room.”

“Ah, yes.” Adam didn’t bother asking if his wife was alone in her room. “John, will you stay for lunch?”

“I do not eat tomatoes,” John cautioned them urgently. “Many people do, and I consider them fools. The tomato has a poison in it that is secreted into the brain, and it causes derangement of the faculties.”

“No tomatoes,” said Abigal.

Along the way back to the Fourieristic Phalanstery, John said, “It is indeed pleasant here, De-la-Noy. And best of all, no negroes.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No negroes. No black apes walking upright, laying claim to the same rights as human beings.”

“See here,” started Abram Skinner, but Abigal caught his arm and silenced him. It is unlikely that Abram would have been able to speak at any rate—even “See here” had been a struggle, and after that Abram became hopelessly tongue-tied.

Adam De-la-Noy merely shook his head, and wondered about the sanity of his old friend John.

Mr. Opdycke was bored. That’s why he’d taken the spoons.

He sat beside the Lake and worked at one of them with a tiny metal file. He’d broken off the handle, and was now smoothing down the edge. Mr. Opdycke sighed out of boredom. He briefly considered conjuring up a mental picture of Abigal Skinner’s backside and having a healthy go at himself, but he was even bored with that, both with Abigal’s backside (which
had lost much of its magic; now it often appeared to Opdycke as nothing but lumps of lard) and with amorous congress in general. Mr. Opdycke chuckled as he considered the term “amorous congress”—he imagined the heads of state gathered together in the Capitol buildings, all of them naked and possessed of cock-upright jiggling-bones.

A fish jumped, far away. Opdycke glanced up briefly and snarled. “Keep it up, darling. I’ll have you soon enough.”

Who would have suspected, Mr. Opdycke mused, that swiving could become so tedious? (He’d finished smoothing the spoon’s edge. Opdycke held the little dish in the palm of his hand and caught the sunlight in it. The glare hurt his eyes, but Opdycke didn’t turn away.) Even rutting with Polyphilia, who did most anything he suggested, was, in the final analysis, dull, bone-breaking work. It was all, Opdycke had concluded, J. B. Hope’s fault. And, to make matters worse, Hope had recently come up with a new theory to be put into practice, that of wilful countenance. Opdycke took an awl and began digging at a point near the edge of the metal. “Wilful countenance” was, Hope’s fancy terminology notwithstanding, sticking the pud into the pudding dish and leaving it there. Hope justified this with his usual mouthful of “amative”s and “propagative”s, and there was, moreover, a practical consideration, in that the Phalanstery was rapidly filling up with small fry. Still, the practice made scant sense to Mr. Opdycke. Joseph Hope claimed that he had withheld himself from orgasm for over two hours, but Opdycke disbelieved him; or suspected that Hope had accomplished the feat with the grotesque Martha, in which case why hadn’t Joe withheld himself from orgasm for two weeks? Mr. Opdycke didn’t think that he himself had ever lasted much more than two minutes and didn’t think he ever would.

Mr. Opdycke heard something rustling in the bushes behind him, and he was startled. Opdycke found the countryside disquieting somehow and half believed that it was inhabited by ferocious beasts, wildcats and grizzlies. Opdycke gripped the awl tightly and looked over his shoulder, prepared to plunge the tool into some creature’s eyeball. He saw, instead, the Indian, Jonathon Whitecrow. Opdycke snorted, half out of relief, half out of disdain for the redskin.

“How!” said Mr. Opdycke.

The Indian tilted his head quizzically. “ ‘How’?”

Opdycke scowled. “Hullo.”

“Oh. Hullo, Mr. Opdycke.” The Indian took some steps forward. “Do you mind if I join you?”

In principle, Mr. Opdycke did mind. He hated Indians almost as much as he hated niggers. In the war that was currently being fought in the States, Opdycke’s sympathy lay firmly with the Confederacy, even though he himself hailed from Vermont. Opdycke was not so sympathetic as to consider taking up arms for Old Glory, but he certainly wished them well. However, Mr. Opdycke shrugged to show the redskin that he was at least indifferent to the notion of his joining him, so Jonathon White-crow gingerly lowered his haunches on to a nearby rock. The two men sat in silence for many moments. Opdycke had succeeded in pushing the awl through the thin metal, and now he was twisting it, enlarging the hole. Jonathon watched him do this with an almost scientific interest. Opdycke found the Indian’s gaze irritating; he gestured violently at the water.

“How do you call that lake?” Opdycke demanded.

Whitecrow turned and stared at the water as if seeing it for the first time. “We call it
Loo Kow
.”

“What does that mean?”

Jonathon shrugged. Opdycke reflected that the Indian shrugged an awful lot, an aristocratic gesture suggesting that most things were inconsequential. “It means ‘Home of the Big Fish,’ ” said Whitecrow, “more or less.”

Mr. Opdycke nodded, picked up some fine wire and a hook. “Is it? Are there big fish in there?”

Again the Indian shrugged.

Opdycke said, “Well?”

The Indian held up a long forefinger, a finger that was stained yellow because Whitecrow smoked the new “cigarettes”, rolling up plug tobacco into thin white tubes of paper. “One big fish,” explained the Indian.

“
Loo Kow
,” muttered Opdycke. He twisted the thin wire hard, and now the fishhook and spoonbowl were firmly fastened together. Mr. Opdycke threaded the end of some gut twine through the spoon’s hole and tied it off. He dangled his creation
in the air and watched the sunlight bounce off of it.

“What makes you think,” asked Jonathon Whitecrow, “that such a thing will work?”

“I have my reasons,” snarled Mr. Opdycke. “Never mind about that. I have my reasons.”

The Indian smiled.

“Why are you smiling?” demanded Mr. Opdycke.

“Because, Mr. Opdycke, you have your reasons.”

For a brief and alarming moment, Opdycke thought that the Indian knew what his reasons were. Opdycke found himself perspiring. He peeled off his shirt and wiped the sweat from his bulging paunch. “How big is the fish?” he asked the Indian.

The Indian was constructing one of his cigarettes. (Opdycke frowned once more. Cigarette smoking was vaguely effeminate, definitely sissified, a habit shared by women, young boys and old hobos.) “Bigger than a breadbox,” the Indian responded rather musically, “smaller than a house.”

“How big?” asked Mr. Opdycke once more.

“How big?” repeated Whitecrow in a strange manner, tilting his head as if addressing some third party. Jonathon nodded, and then answered, “Big enough to eat anything in the water. Too big to be eaten by anything in the water. So the answer to your question is, as big as the water itself.”

“How big in feet? Two feet? Three feet?”

“A fish doesn’t have feet,” responded Whitecrow.

Mr. Opdycke didn’t like being teased. Mostly out of boredom he considered murdering the Indian. Opdycke thought that the awl would make the best weapon, sharp enough to pierce the skull. Then Opdycke would fill up the Indian’s pockets with rocks, toss him into
Loo Kow
, and no one would ever be the wiser.

Jonathon Whitecrow was smiling at Mr. Opdycke in a gentle way. “I see you have a cranking reel-winch,” said the Indian, pointing with his smoking white tube at Opdycke’s fishing gear.

“Yeh,” grunted Opdycke rudely, but pride of ownership overcame him. He picked up the butt of his pole and cranked the contraption’s handle. It produced a horrible sound, loud and jagged like a ratchet’s. “I made it,” he informed the Indian, “at the Phalanstery.” Opdycke set about assembling his stuff. First
of all he fed the horse-hair line from the reel through the rod’s guides. Opdycke’s pole was seven feet long, a fairly short one. Joseph Hope owned rods of nine, ten and even twelve feet, which he used when hiding behind bushes and fishing quiet waters. Then Opdycke attached the two lines together, the horse-hair and the gut leader. He was ready to fish.

Mr. Opdycke methodically placed his feet one in front of the other and cocked his legs. He held the rod with both hands, spaced some two feet apart on the long butt. Mr. Opdycke pulled the rod backward until it pointed at the Indian (Whitecrow was standing behind Opdycke, watching him studiously) and then Mr. Opdycke twisted his trunk around sharply.

His lure, the “Spoon”, traveled some twenty-five feet out into the lake and landed with a splash.

Opdycke was obviously pleased with himself. “It beats pouching,” he said to the Indian. Opdycke cranked the handle of his reel two or three times and then stumbled forward. The end of his pole bent over double and trembled.

“Aha!” bellowed Mr. Opdycke, delighted. “I knew it would work!”

“How did you know that?” asked the Indian gently.

Opdycke was too busy turning the winch to worry about what the Indian said. Opdycke knew he had to land the fish as quickly as possible, before any of the knots in his line gave way. The fish had other notions. It kept racing away, stripping line off the reel. Opdycke soon grew quite annoyed with the fish’s antics.

“Give up!” Opdycke screamed. “You are my supper! It’s no good trying to get away!” Opdycke was sweating profusely, the perspiration trickling into his eyes and stinging. Mr. Opdycke finally elected to abandon the reel, because the fish was taking line from it faster than he could crank it back. He handed his rod to a startled Jonathon Whitecrow and then rushed forward, taking the line into his hands. Mr. Opdycke hauled away, and after a minute or two (the fish showed no sign of tiring, even seemed to get stronger near the end of the battle, breaking the surface of the water and trying to throw the hook out of its mouth) Mr. Opdycke landed the animal. Remarkably, it was a rather small fish, not much more than a pound. Opdycke studied
it with some curiosity. “It’s one of those bass,” he said to the Indian. Mr. Opdycke was disappointed with his catch, a nuisance fish that wasn’t much good for eating. “But what’s it doing away up north here?”

Jonathon Whitecrow bent over the fish and plucked the Spoon out of its mouth. The fish flipped eagerly over the rocks and back into
Loo Kow
. “People bring them,” the Indian finally answered Opdycke. “People on trains sometimes have two or three in a bucket, and they throw them from the train when they cross water. They are a strong fish, and strong willed, and they live in whichever waters they are tossed into. Personally,” said Whitcrow, “I am quite fond of them.”

“They eat the good fishes, like the trout,” said Mr. Opdycke, voicing the most frequent complaint against the rogue bass.

“When one is a fish,” said Jonathon, “it’s a dog-eat-dog world.”