The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Countrymen! Countrymen!” Ebenezer called. The Negroes stopped their song and left their labors to see him go by, and the white men too turned round in surprise at the outcry. It was indeed a most uncommon spectacle: even thinner than usual from the rigors of his months on shipboard, Ebenezer bounded down the log road like a shaggy stork. His feet were bare and blistered, his shirt and breeches shred to rags: bald and beardless at the time of his abduction from the Poseidon, he had let his hair grow wild from scalp and chin alike, so that now, though still of no great length, it was entirely matted and ungroomed. Add to this, he was more sunburnt than the planters and at least as dirty, the very picture of a castaway, and his haste was made the more grotesque by the way he clutched both arms across his shirt front, wherein he carried still the curling pages of the Journal.

  “Countrymen!” he cried again upon reaching the landing. “Say something quickly, that I may hear what tongue you speak!”

  The men exchanged glances; some shifted their positions, and others sucked uneasily on their pipes.

  “He is a madman,” one suggested, and before he could retreat found himself embraced.

  “Thou’rt English! Dear God, thou’rt English!”

  “Back off, there!”

  Ebenezer pointed jubilantly seawards. “Where is that vessel bound, sir, as thou’rt a Christian Englishman?”

  “For Portsmouth, with the fleet—”

  “Praise Heav’n!” He leaped and clapped his hands and called back to the warehouse, “Bertrand! Bertrand! They’re honest English gentlemen all! Hither, Bertrand! And prithee, wondrous Englishman,” he said, and laid hold of another planter who, owing to the water at his back, could not escape, “what isle is this I have been washed to? Is’t Barbados, or the far Antilles?”

  “Thy brains are pickled with rum,” growled the planter, shaking free.

  “The Bermoothes, then!” Ebenezer cried. He fell to his knees and clutched the fellow’s trouser legs. “Tell me ’tis Corvo, or some isle I have not heard of!”

  “ ’Tis not the one nor the other, nor any isle else,” the planter said. “ ’Tis but poor shitten Maryland, damn your eyes.”

  18

  The Laureate Pays His Fare to Cross a River

  “MARYLAND!” Ebenezer released his victim’s trousers and looked back toward the woods he’d emerged from, at the fields of green tobacco and the Negroes grinning broadly beside their hogsheads. His face lit up. Still kneeling, as though transfixed, he laid his right hand over his heart and raised his left to the gently rolling hills, behind which the sun was just descending. “Smile, ye gracious hills and sunlit trees!” he commanded. “Thine own sweet singer, thy Laureate, is come to noise thy glory!”

  This was a disembarkation-piece he had composed aboard the Poseidon some months before, deeming it fit that as Laureate of Maryland he should salute his bailiwick poetically upon first setting foot on it, and intending also to leave no question among his new compatriots that he was poet to the bone. He was therefore not a little piqued to see his initial public declamation received with great hilarity by his audience, who guffawed and snorted, smacked their thighs and held their sides, wet their noses and elbowed their neighbors, and pointed horny fingers at Ebenezer, and broke wind in their uncouth breeches.

  The Laureate let go his pose, rose to his feet, arched his great blond eyebrows, pursed his lips, and said, “I’ll cast you no more pearls, my friends. Have a care, or I’ll see thy masters birch you one and all.” He turned his back on them and hurried to the foot of the landing, where Bertrand stood uncomfortably under the scrutiny of several delighted Negroes.

  “Put by your dream of seven cities, Bertrand: you stand upon the blessed soil of Maryland!”

  “I heard as much,” the valet said sourly.

  “Is’t not a paradise? Look yonder, how the sunset fires those trees!”

  “Yet your fellow Marylanders would win no place at Court, I think.”

  “Nay, who shall blame them for their disrespect?” Ebenezer looked down at his own garb and Bertrand’s, and laughed. “What man could see a Laureate Poet here? Besides, they’re only simple servants.”

  “ ’Tis an idle master lets ’em drink their afternoons, then,” Bertrand said skeptically. “I cannot blame Quassapelagh—”

  “La!” the poet warned. “Speak not his name!”

  “I merely meant, I see his point of view.”

  “Only think!” Ebenezer marveled. “He was king of the salvage Indians of Maryland! And Drakepecker—” He looked with awe on the muscular Negroes and frowned.

  Bertrand followed the thought, and his eyes welled up with tears. “How could that princely fellow be a slave? Plague take your Maryland!”

  “We must not judge o’erhastily,” Ebenezer said, but he stroked his beard reflectively.

  All through this colloquy the idle Englishmen had wheezed and snickered in the background. One of their number—a wiry, wrinkled old reprobate with clipped ears and a branded palm—now scraped and bowed his way up to them and said with exaggerated accent, “Your Grace must pardon our rudeness. We’re at your service, m’lord.”

  “Be’t so,” Ebenezer said at once, and giving Bertrand a knowing look he stepped out on the pier to address the group. “Know, my good men, that rude and tattered though I appear, I am Ebenezer Cooke, appointed by the Lord Proprietary to the office of Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland; I and my man have suffered imprisonment at the hands of pirates and narrowly escaped a watery grave. I shall not this time report your conduct to your masters, but do henceforth show more respect, if not for me, at least for Poetry!”

  This speech they greeted with applause and raucous cheers, which, taking them as a sign of gratitude for his leniency, elicited from the Laureate a benign smile.

  “Now,” he said, “I know not where in Maryland I stand, but I must go at once to Malden, my plantation on Choptank River. I shall require both transportation and direction, for I know naught of the Province. You, my man,” he went on, addressing the old man with the branded palm who had spoken previously. “Will you lead me thither? I’m certain your master shan’t object, when he learns the office of your passenger.”

  “Aye, now, that’s certain!” the fellow answered, with a glance at his companions. “But say, now, Master Poet, how will ye pay me for my labor? For we must paddle o’er this river here, and there’s nothing floats like gold.”

  Ebenezer hid his discomfort behind an even haughtier mien. “As’t happens, my man, what gold I have is not upon my person. In any case, I daresay your master would forbid you to take money in such a worthy service.”

  “I’ll take my chances there,” the old man said. “If ye cannot pay me, ye’ll cross as best ye can. Is’t possible so great a man hath not a ring or other kind of valuable?”

  “Ye may have mine,” growled Bertrand. “ ’Tis a bona fide salvage relic, that I hear is worth a fortune.” He reached into his breeches pocket. “Hi, there, I’ve lost it through a hole—”

  “Out on’t!” Ebenezer cried, losing patience with the Marylander. “Not for nothing am I Laureate of this Province! Ferry me across, fellow, and you shall be rewarded with the finest gold e’er mined: the pure coin of poetry!”

  The old man cocked his head as though impressed. “Coin o’ poetry, is it? Ye mean yell say me a verse for paddling across the river?”

  “Recite?” Ebenezer scoffed. “Nay, man, I shan’t recite; I shall compose! I shall extemporize! Your gold will not be soiled from many hands but be struck gleaming from the mint before your eyes!”

  The man scratched one clipped ear. “Well, I don’t know. I ne’er heard tell of business done like that.”

  “Tut,” Ebenezer reassured him. “ ’Tis done from day to day in Europe, and for weightier matters than a pitiful ferry ride. Doth not Cervantes tell us of a poet in Spain that hired himself a harlot for three hundred sonnets on the theme of Pyramus and Thisbe?”

  “Ye do not tell me!” mar
veled the ferryman. “Three hundred sonnets! And what, pray, might a sonnet be?”

  Ebenezer smiled at the fellow’s ignorance. “ ’Tis a verse-form.”

  “A verse-form, now!”

  “Aye. We poets do not merely make poems; we make certain sorts of poems. Just as in coins you have farthings and pence and shillings and crowns, in verse you have quatrains and sonnets and villanelles and rondelays.”

  “Aha!” said the ferryman. “And this sonnet, then, is like a shilling? Or a half crown? For I shall ask a crown to paddle ye o’er this river.”

  “A crown!” the poet cried.

  “No less, Your Excellency—the currents and tides, ye know, this time of year.”

  Ebenezer looked skeptically at the placid river.

  “He is a rogue and very Jew,” Bertrand said.

  “Ah well, no matter, Bertrand.” Ebenezer winked at his valet and turned again to the Marylander. “But see here, my man, you must know a sonnet’s worth a half pound sterling on the current London market.”

  “Spare me the last line of’t then,” said the ferryman, “for I shan’t give change.”

  “Done.” To the bystanders, who had watched the bargaining with amusement, he said, “Witness that this fellow hath agreed, on consideration of one sonnet, not including the final line, to ferry Ebenezer Cooke, Poet and Laureate of Maryland, and his man across the—I say, what do you call this river?”

  “The Choptank,” Ebenezer’s boatman answered quickly.

  “You don’t say! Then Malden must be near at hand!”

  “Aye,” the old man vowed. “ ’Tis just through yonder woods. Ye can walk there lightly once ye cross this river.”

  “Excellent! Done, then?”

  “Done, Your Highness, done!” He held up an unclean finger. “But I shall want my payment in advance.”

  “Ah, come now!” Ebenezer protested.

  “What doth it matter?” whispered Bertrand.

  “What warrant have I thou’rt a poet at all?” the man insisted. “Pay me now, or no ferry ride.”

  Ebenezer sighed. “So be’t.” And to the group: “A silence, now, an it please you.”

  Then, pressing a finger to his temple and squinting both his eyes, he struck an attitude of composition, and after a moment declaimed:

  “Hence, loathed Melancholy,

  Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born

  In Stygian cave forlorn

  ’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!

  Find out some uncouth cell,

  Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

  And the night-Raven sings;

  There, under Ebon shades, and low-browed Rocks,

  As ragged as thy Locks,

  In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.”

  There was some moments’ silence.

  “Well, come, my man!” the poet urged. “You have your fare!”

  “What? Is that a sonnet?”

  “On my honor,” Ebenezer assured him. “Minus the final line, to be sure.”

  “To be sure, to be sure.” The boatman tugged at his mutilated ear. “So that is my half-pound sonnet! A great ugly one ’twas, at that, with all those shrieks and hollowings in’t.”

  “What matter? Would you lift your nose at a gold piece if the King had an ugly head? A sonnet’s a sonnet.”

  “Aye, aye, ’tis truth,” sighed the ferryman, and shook his head as though outwitted. “Very well, then; yonder’s my canoe.”

  “Let’s be off,” said the poet, and took his valet’s arm triumphantly.

  But when he saw the vessel they were to cross in, he came near to letting his ferryman keep the sonnet gratis. “Had I guessed this swine trough was to be our boat, I’d have kept the dark Cimmerian desert in my purse.”

  “Complain no more,” the boatman answered. “Had I but known what a grubby pittance was your sonnet, ye’d have swum for all o’ me.”

  Thus understanding each other, ferryman and passengers climbed cautiously aboard the dugout canoe and proceeded out onto the river, which lay as smooth as any looking glass. When well past mid-channel they found the surface still unrippled, the passengers began to suspect that the difficulty of the crossing had been exaggerated.

  “I say,” asked Bertrand from the bow, “where are those wicked tides and currents, that made this trip so dear?”

  “Nowhere save in my fancy,” said the ferryman with a grin. “Since ye were paying your passage with a poem, I had as well demand a big one—it cost ye no more.”

  “Oho!” cried Ebenezer. “So you deceived me! Well, think not thou’rt aught the richer for’t, my fellow, for the sonnet was not mine: I had it from one whose talent equals my own—”

  But the boatman was not a whit put out by this disclosure. “Last year’s gold is as good as this year’s,” he declared, “and one man’s as good as another’s. Though ye did play false upon your pledge, I’m nowise poorer for’t. A ha’ pound’s a ha’ pound, and a sonnet’s a sonnet.” Just then the canoe touched the opposite shore of the river. “Here ye be, Master Poet, and the joke’s on you.”

  “Blackguard!” grumbled Bertrand.

  Ebenezer smiled. “As you will, sir; as you will.” He stepped ashore with Bertrand and waited until the ferryman pushed back onto the river; then he laughed and called to him: “Yet the truth is, Master Numskull, you sit fleeced from nape to shank! Not only is your sonnet not my doing; ’tis not even a sonnet! Good day, sir!” He made ready to flee through the woods to Malden should the ferryman pursue them, but the gentleman merely clucked his tongue, between strokes of his paddle.

  “No matter, Master Madman,” he called back. “ ’Tis not the Choptank River, either. Good night, sir!”

  19

  The Laureate Attends a Swine-Maiden’s Tale

  UPON REALIZING THAT the ferryman had marooned him in he knew not what wild woods, Ebenezer set up a considerable hallooing and crying, hoping thereby to attract someone from the opposite shore to rescue him; but the men in Scotch cloth were evidently in on the prank, for they turned away and left the hapless pair to their own devices. Already the light was failing: at length he left off his calling and surveyed the woods around them, which grew more shadowy by the minute.

  “Only think on’t!” he said. “ ’Twas Maryland all along!”

  Bertrand kicked disconsolately at a tree stump. “More’s the pity, says I. Your Maryland hath not even civil citizens.”

  “Ah, friend, your heart was set on a golden city, and Maryland hath none. But Gold is where you find it, is’t not? What treasure is more valuable than this, to reach unscathed our journey’s end?”

  “I would I’d stayed with Drakepecker on the beach,” the valet said. “What good hath come since we discovered where we are? Who knows what beasts we’ll find in yonder shadows? Or salvages, that rightly hate an English face?”

  “And yet, ’tis Maryland!” Ebenezer sighed happily. “Who knows but what my father, and his father, have crossed this selfsame river and seen those selfsame trees? Think on’t, man: we are not far from Malden!”

  “And is that such a joyous thought, sir, when for aught we know ’tis no more your estate?”

  Ebenezer’s face fell. “I’faith, I had forgot your wager!” At thought of it he joined his valet’s gloom and sat at the foot of a nearby birch. “We dare not try these woods tonight, at any rate. Build up a fire, and we’ll find our way at dawn.”

  “ ’Twill draw the Indians, will it not?” Bertrand asked.

  “It might,” the poet said glumly. “On the other hand, ’twill keep away the beasts. Do as you please.”

  Indeed, even as Bertrand commenced striking on the flint from his tinderbox—in which also he had brought from the beach a small supply of dried sea-grass for tinder—the two men heard the grunt of an animal somewhere among the trees not many yards upstream.

  “Hark!” Goose flesh pimpled the Laureate’s arms, and he jumped to his feet. “Make haste there with
the fire!”

  The grunt sounded again, accompanied by a rustling of leaves; a moment later another answered from farther away, and then another and another, until the wood was filled with the sound of beasts, advancing in their direction. While Bertrand struck furiously at the flint, Ebenezer called once more across the river for help, but there was no one to hear.

  “A spark! I have a spark!” cried Bertrand, and cupped the tinder in his hands to blow up a flame. “Make ready the kindling wood!”

  “ ’Sheart, we’ve not got any!” The sound was almost upon them now. “Run for the river!”

  Bertrand dropped the seaweed, and they raced headlong into the shallows; nor had they got knee-deep before they heard the animals burst out of the woods behind them and squeal and snuffle on the muddy shore.

  “You there!” cried a woman’s voice. “Are ye mad or merely drunken?”

  “Marry!” said Bertrand. “ ’Tis a woman!”

  They turned around in surprise and in the last light saw standing on the mud bank a disheveled woman of uncertain age, dressed, like the men on the landing, in bleached and tattered Scotch cloth and carrying a stick with which she drove a number of swine. These latter grumped and rooted along the shore, pausing often to regard the two men balefully.

  “Dear Heav’n, the jest’s on us!” the poet called back, and did his best to laugh. “My man and I are strangers to the Province, and were left stranded here by some dolt for a prank!”

  “Come hither, then,” the woman said, “These swine shan’t eat ye.” To reassure them she drove the nearest hog off with her stick, and the two men waded shorewards.

  “I thank you for your kindness,” Ebenezer said; “haply ’tis in your power to do me yet another, for I need a lodging for the night. My name is Ebenezer Cooke, Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland, and I—nay, madam, fear not for your modesty!” The woman had gasped and turned away as they approached. “Our clothes are wet and ragged, but they cover us yet!” Ebenezer prattled on. “In sooth I’m not the picture of a laureate poet, I know well; ’tis owing to the many trials I’ve been through, the like of which you’d ne’er believe if I should tell you. But once I reach my manor on the Choptank—i’God!”