The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  The poet started, and saw by his companion’s grim smile that McEvoy had formed the question deliberately. For an instant he forgot the frightful cold: he was at table in Locket’s, where the eyes of Ben Oliver, Dick Merriweather, Tom Trent, and Joan Toast had joined McEvoy’s to render him immobile; again, as then, he felt the weight of choice devolve upon him, peg him out like a tan yard hide in all directions. It was a queer moment: he felt as must a seasoned Alpinist brought back to a crag whence he fell of old and barely survived; many another and more formidable he has scaled since without a tremor, but this one turns his blood to water…

  With some effort, Ebenezer threw off the memory. “I say we try for the house. Wind and waves are behind us, and for better or worse we’ll have done with’t in an hour.”

  However chilling this final observation, it spurred them to action. They overturned the dinghy to empty the bilge, dragged it down to the water, and launched it. McEvoy’s reasoning proved correct: the water standing in the bilge had kept the chine- and keelson-seams tight. At Ebenezer’s suggestion, who had learned something of rowing from Burlingame, Bertrand and McEvoy each equipped himself with half of a shingle discovered on the beach, both to assist in freeing out the water they were certain to ship and to help prevent the little boat from broaching to in the following seas.

  Though he truly cared little now for his own safety, the burden of responsibility weighed heavy on the poet’s heart. He knew so little about what he was doing, and they carried out his suggestions, on which their lives depended, as if he were Captain Cairn! But however meager his seamanship, it was apparently superior to Bertrand’s and McEvoy’s. And however great the burden, it was no longer an unfamiliar one: he grappled with it calmly, as with an old, well-known opponent, and wondered whether his sensibility had perhaps of late been toughened like the hands of an apprentice mason, by frequent laceration.

  “Methinks ’twere best the twain of you sit forward, to keep the stern high. If sculling fails us, we’ll paddle like salvages.”

  They clambered aboard, shivering violently from their new wetting; Ebenezer was able to pole out a hundred yards or so through shoal water before it became necessary to fit his oar between the transom tholes and commence sculling. Fortunately, the first mile or so was in the lee of the island; the relative stillness of the water gave him opportunity to get the knack of pitching the blade properly for thrust without losing his oar. But soon the island was too far behind to shelter them: the hissing seas rolled in astern—three, four, and five feet from trough to crest; as each overtook them the dinghy seemed to falter, intimidated, and then actually to be drawn backwards as if by undertow. Ebenezer would hold his breath—surely they would be pooped! But at the last instant the stern would be flung high and the dinghy thrust forward on the crest; the scanty freeboard disappeared; water sluiced over both gunwales; Bertrand and McEvoy bailed madly to keep afloat. Then the sea rushed on, and the dinghy would seem to slide backwards into the maw of the one behind. Each wave was a fresh terror; it seemed unthinkable that they should survive it, and even more that managing by some miracle to do so earned them not a second’s respite. The helmsman’s job was especially arduous and tricky: though the net motion of the dinghy was actually always forward, the approach of each new sea had the effect of sternway; instead of sculling, Ebenezer would be obliged to use the oar for a rudder to keep the boat from broaching to, and moreover would have to steer backwards, since the water was moving faster than the boat. Only at the crest could he scull for a stroke or two—but not a moment too long, or the dinghy would yaw in the next trough. The men were rapidly demoralized past speech; they toiled as if possessed, and when the moon broke the scud it lit three shocked faces staring wide-eyed at the monster overtaking them.

  To turn back was out of the question, since even if some god should turn them around, they could make no windward headway. Yet after what seemed an hour of frantic labor and hairsbreadth escapes—perhaps actually no more than twenty minutes—the light ahead appeared no closer than before. What was worse, it seemed to have moved distinctly northward. It was Bertrand who first observed this distressing fact, and it moved him to speak for the first time in many minutes.

  “Dear Father! What if it’s a ship, and there’s no land for miles?”

  McEvoy offered an alternative hypothesis. “Belike the wind hath swung round a bit to the northwest. We may have to hike a few miles up the shore.”

  “There’s e’en a happier possibility,” Ebenezer said. “I scarce dare hope—But stay! Do you hear a sound?”

  They paused in their work to listen and were nearly taken under by the next wave.

  “Aye, ’tis a surf!” Ebenezer cried joyously. “Neither we nor the light have changed course; ’tis that we’re almost upon it!” What he wanted to explain was that though from the island they had steered as directly for the light as they were able, their actual course was somewhat to the south of it; from four or five miles distance the error (perhaps a few hundred feet) had been too small to notice, but as they drew very near, the angle between their course and the light tended to increase towards ninety degrees. Before he could elaborate, however, a wave greater than usual tossed the stern high and to larboard and lifted the oar from its tholes.

  “She’s broaching to!” he warned.

  The others paddled to no purpose with their shingles. Ebenezer slammed the oar back between the pins and attempted to bring the stern into the seas by putting the “tiller” end hard over to larboard, as he had grown used to doing under sternway. But his action was out of phase, for the crest had passed and left the dinghy momentarily wayless in the trough: the motion of the oar was in fact a sculling stroke, and had the effect of bringing the stern even farther around. The next wave struck them fair on the starboard quarter, broached them to, and filled the boat ankle deep with water; the one after that, a white-capped five-footer, took them square abeam, and they were flailing once more in the icy Chesapeake. This time, however, their ordeal was brief: their feet struck seaweed and mud at once, and they found themselves less than a dozen yards from shore. They scrambled in, knocked down time and again by the hip-high breakers, and gained the beach at last, scarcely able to stand.

  “We must make haste!” McEvoy gasped. “We may freeze yet!”

  As fast as they could manage, stumbling and panting, they moved up the shore towards their beacon, now plainly recognizable as the lighted windows of a good-sized house. Not far from it, where the beach met the lawn of the house, stood a tall loblolly pine, at the foot of which they saw a conspicuous white object, like a large vertical stone. Ebenezer’s hackles tingled. “Ah God!” he cried and summoned the last of his strength to sprint forward and embrace the grave. The feeble moon sufficed to show the inscription:

  Anne Bowyer Cooke

  b. 1645 d. 1666

  Thus Far Hath the Lord

  Helped Us.

  The others came up behind. “What is it?”

  Ebenezer would not turn his head. “My journey’s done,” he wept. “I have come full circle. Yonder’s Malden; go and save yourselves.”

  Astonished, they read the gravestone, and when entreaty proved vain, they lifted Ebenezer by main strength from the grave. Once upon his feet, he offered them no resistance, but the last of his spirit seemed gone.

  “Had I ne’er been brought to birth,” he said, pointing to the stone, “that woman were alive today, and my sister with her, and my father a gentleman sot-weed planter, and the three of them happy in yonder house.”

  Bertrand was too near freezing to offer a reply, if he had any, but McEvoy—who likewise shook from head to foot with cold—led the poet off by the arm and said, “Go to, ’tis like the sin o’ Father Adam, that we all have on our heads; we ne’er asked for’t, but there it is, and do we choose to live, why, we must needs live with’t.”

  Ebenezer had been used to seeing Malden a-bustle with deplorable activity after dark, but now only the parlor appeared to be occupied; the rest
of the house, as well as the grounds and outbuildings—he peered with awful shame in the direction of the curing-house—was dark and quiet. As they went up the empty lawn toward the front door, which faced south-westwards to the grave and the Bay beyond, McEvoy, as much to warm himself, no doubt, as to comfort Ebenezer, went on to declare through chattering teeth that the single light was a good sign: without question it meant that Andrew Cooke had put his house in order and was waiting with his daughter-in-law for news of his prodigal son. He would be overjoyed to see them; they would be clothed and fed, and alarms would be dispatched at once to Anne Arundel Town to intercept Long Ben Avery.

  “Stay.” Ebenezer shook his head. “Such fables hurt too much beside the truth.”

  McEvoy released his arm angrily. “Still the virgin,” he cried, “with no thought for any wight’s loss save his own! Run down and die on yonder grave!”

  Ebenezer shook his head: he wanted to explain to his injured companion that he suffered not from his loss alone, but from McEvoy’s as well, and Anna’s, and Andrew’s, and even Bertrand’s—from the general condition of things, in sum, for which he saw himself answerable—and that the pain of loss, however great, was as nothing beside the pain of responsibility for it. The fallen suffer from Adam’s fall, he wanted to explain; but in that knowledge—which the Fall itself vouchsafed him—how more must Adam have suffered! But he was too gripped by cold and despair to essay such philosophy.

  They reached the house.

  “We’d best have a look through the window ere we knock,” Bertrand said. “I’Christ, what will Master Andrew say to me, that was sent to be your adviser!”

  They went to the lighted window of the parlor, from which they heard the sounds of masculine laughter and conversation.

  McEvoy got there first. “Some men at cards,” he reported, and then a look of sudden pain came into his face. “Dear God! Can that be poor Joan?”

  Bertrand hastened up beside him. “Aye, that’s the swine-maid, and yonder’s Master Andrew in the periwig, but—”

  Now he too showed great distress. “God’s blood and body, Master Eben! Tis Colonel Robotham!”

  But Ebenezer was at the window sill by this time, and beheld for himself these wonders and others by far more marvelous. Joan Toast, so beridden and devoured by her afflictions that she looked a leprous Bedlamite, was hobbling with a pitcher of ale towards a green baize table in the center of the parlor, about whose circumference five gentlemen sat at cards: the lawyer, physician, and minister of the gospel Richard Sowter, who sucked on his pipe and called upon various saints to witness the wretched hand he was being dealt; the cooper (and dealer) William Smith, who smiled grandly at the table and with his pipestem directed Joan to fill Andrew Cooke’s glass; Bertrand’s portly, sanguine father-in-law from Talbot County, Colonel George Robotham, who seemed preoccupied with something quite other than lanterloo; Andrew Cooke himself, grown thinner and older-looking since Ebenezer had seen him last, but more sharp-eyed than ever, grasping his cards in his good left hand and glancing like an old eagle at the others, as if they were not his adversaries but his prey; and finally, most appalling of all, at Andrew’s withered right arm, joking as merrily over his cards as if he were back in Locket’s—Henry Burlingame, still in the character he called Nicholas Lowe of Talbot!

  “Very well, gentlemen,” the cooper declared, having dealt four hands. “I share the fortunes of Mr. Sowter, I believe.”

  “Put it the other way about,” Burlingame remarked, “and there’ll be more truth than poetry in’t when we get to court.”

  Sowter shook his head in mock despair. “St. Dominic’s sparrow, neighbors! If our case were half as feeble as this miscarriage, we’d get no farther than the courthouse jakes with’t, I swear!”

  “As we all know ye shan’t in any case,” Burlingame taunted amiably, “inasmuch as the only real case to argue is the size of your bribe.”

  “Ah, lads, go to,” said Andrew Cooke. “This talk of bribes and miscarriages alarms the Colonel!” He smiled sardonically at Colonel Robotham. “Do forgive my son his over-earnestness, George: ’tis a famous failing of the lad’s, as I daresay your daughter hath remarked.”

  Outside the window, Bertrand gasped. “D’ye hear that, Master Eben? He called that wight his son! An entire stranger!”

  “There’s something amiss,” McEvoy agreed, “but they all seem peaceable enough.” Without more ado he began to rap on the windowpanes. “Hallo! Hallo! Let us in or we’re dead men!”

  “Nay, i’Christ!” cried Bertrand, but he was too late; the startled players turned towards the window.

  “Januarius’s bubbling blood!”

  “Look to’t, Susan,” the cooper ordered calmly, and Joan Toast set her pitcher on the sideboard.

  “Ebenezer, my boy,” said Andrew Cooke, “fetch thy pistol.” Burlingame laid his cards face down on the baize and went to do as he was bid.

  Joan Toast opened the door and thrust out a lantern. “Who is’t?” she called listlessly.

  “Run!” muttered Bertrand, and lit out across the lawn.

  McEvoy drew back from the window and bit his underlip nervously. “What say ye, Eben?” he whispered. “Hadn’t we best run for’t?”

  But the poet neither moved nor made reply, for the reason that at first sight of the strange assemblage in the parlor he had been dumfounded, brought back (or around, as the case may be) to that vulnerable condition of his youth which the cuisses of virginity, the cuirass of his laureateship, were donned to shield; and when in addition he had witnessed his father addressing Burlingame—incredibly!—as “my son” and “Ebenezer,” he had been frozen on the instant where he stood, not by the Bay wind but by the same black breeze that thrice before—in Magdalene College, in Locket’s, and in his room in Pudding Lane—had sighed from the Pit to ice his bones.

  “Who is’t?” Joan repeated.

  McEvoy stepped from behind Ebenezer so that the light from the parlor window illumined his face.

  “ ’Tis I, Joan Toast,” he said uncertainly. “ ’Tis Eben Cooke and John McEvoy…”

  Joan made a sound and clutched at the doorjamb; the lantern slipped to the ground and was extinguished. A man’s voice came from the vestibule behind her. “What the Devil!”

  “Haply we’d better flee, after all,” McEvoy suggested. But Ebenezer, no longer even shivering, stood transfixed in his original position.

  19

  The Poet Awakens from His Dream of Hell to Be Judged in Life by Rhadamanthus

  FOR CENTURIES UPON CENTURIES, so it seemed to Ebenezer, he had sojourned in the realm of Lucifer, where in penance for Lust and Pride he underwent a double torture: the first was to be transferred at short intervals from everlasting flames to the ice of Cocytus, frozen by the wings of the King of Hell himself; the second, less frequent but more painful, was to see commingled and transfused before his eyes the faces of Joan Toast and his sister Anna. Joan would bend near him, her face unmarred and spirited as it had been in London: her dress was fresh, her pox vanished; her eyes were bright and tender—indeed, her face was not hers at all, but Anna Cooke’s! Then even as he watched his sister’s face he saw her eyes go red and dull, her teeth rot in the gums, her flesh go raw with suppurating lesions—until at last, with Joan Toast’s face, she became Joan Toast, whereupon the cycle would sometimes recommence. The metamorphosis invariably stole his breath; he would choke and cry out, thrash his arms and legs about in the fire or the ice, and gibber blasphemies as obscure as Pluto’s “Papè Satan aleppe…” It is not difficult to imagine, therefore, with what joy he found Anna quite unaltered when at length he opened his eyes and saw her sitting near his bed, reading a book. The very magnitude of his relief thwarted its expression; he fell at once into profoundest dreamless sleep.

  Upon his second awakening he was more rational; he realized that he had been ill and delirious for some time—whether a day or a month he could not guess—and that now his fever was gone. It pleased him no end to see
that his sister was still in attendance at his bedside, since now he was quite able to address her.

  “Dearest Anna! How very kind of you to nurse me…”

  He spoke no further, both because his sister, weeping joyfully, rushed from her chair to embrace him, and because he suddenly understood how incredible it was that she should be there, apparently safe and sound!

  “I’faith, where am I?” he whispered. “How is’t thou’rt here?”

  “Too great a story!” Anna sobbed. “Thou’rt home in Malden, Eben, and God be praised thou’rt back among the living!” Without releasing him she called through the open doorway, “Roxanne! Come quick! Eben’s awake!”

  “Roxanne as well?” Ebenezer closed his eyes to gather strength.

  “Thou’rt weak, poor thing! Marry, if you but knew how I wept when I learned what Captain Avery had done, and how I yearned to die with you, and how I feared you’d perish here at Malden and spoil the miracle—i’God, ’tis too much to tell!”

  Mrs. Russecks and Henrietta came in from the hall, neither evidently the worse for their ordeal, and when their initial rejoicing subsided, the poet learned the circumstances of their escape.

  “ ’Twas an act of God, nor more nor less,” Mrs. Russecks declared simply. “How else account for’t? Long Ben Avery is Benjamin Long of Church Creek, my first and long-lost lover!” Immediately after dispatching the three male prisoners, she said, the privateer had summoned the women aft for the avowed purpose of taking his pleasure, but as it turned out, they suffered no more than a few prurient remarks, for upon learning first her Christian name and then, in response to closer inquiry, her maiden surname, his attitude had changed altogether: he had apologized for having thrown the men overboard, expressed his hope that they would reach Sharp’s Island safely, and at the risk of his own life changed course for the mouth of the Severn, where he had bid them adieu and returned to his own ship, leaving Captain Cairn to ferry them singlehanded to Anne Arundel Town!