A Carnivore's Inquiry

by Sabina Murray

  He hears Mather suddenly, a few feet behind him, call out in pain and panic. Pearce turns to see the struggle. Where does Mather find the strength and he unarmed, and Greenhill already having cut him, the blood spewing forth from his head? Pearce and Travers manage to calm Mather down. Maybe he is weak with blood loss, because it seems strange that any words, particularly from these companions, could calm a man in such a predicament. Greenhill is feeling generous. “Give him half an hour to say his prayers.”

  Half an hour? thinks Pearce. And why? I’m hungry now. If he’s so anxious to have words with his maker, we could send him forthwith, and the two could have a face-to-face. How much value can thirty minutes of painful blood-loss and mental agony have for a man? Pearce sits in the grass listening to the pained entreaties of Mather. He looks over at Travers, who’s looking at him. It will be Travers next, affection or not, because Greenhill will still be shaken up over Mather’s resistance. Much like pork is what Greenhill had said about the meat, and much like pork Pearce has found it. No. Travers will be next. And after that? Greenhill has the ax. Pearce will deal with that obstacle when he comes to it.

  “How much time has passed?” shouts Greenhill.

  “Do I have a bloody watch?” says Pearce. “Time enough. We’ve got to get moving.”

  And Greenhill finishes the job.

  Travers weakens further. He begs Greenhill and Pearce to leave him behind to die, to have his body rot unmolested. Surely they can make it to Hobart on what they’ve managed to cut from Mather. Travers wakens from a moment’s nap to hear Greenhill and Pearce deciding his fate. The land is now lush and green, sweet little pudding-hills, a landscape not so alien, could be Ireland. Could be England, but for those little hopping beasts always out of reach, looking from side to side of their wise pointy faces, never close enough to kill. But here’s Travers stretched out in final agony. No need to hunt. The only thing that would make this more convenient is if Travers could skin and dress himself. If Travers could say, “What for you, Alexander? Fancy a piece of thigh, or maybe some of the upper arm?”

  Pearce. Greenhill.

  Two men, feeble with their strange diet, exhausted by heat, struggle toward Hobart. The land is now flat. A blanket of tall grass whips in the steady breeze. Pearce and Greenhill, although they do not know it, are an easy two days’ travel to Hobart. The immediate enemy is sleep, which is threatening them both. Their eyelids droop, then flicker up again. Greenhill’s joints are stiff, his arms and legs feel deadened with fatigue. An ax is small comfort against sleep, when out there in the tall grass is Alexander Pearce, whose sharp eyes dart out across his snub nose, out across the plain, waiting. This is a contest that Pearce knows he has already won. Across the grass, Greenhill, with his eyes now closed, cradles the ax in his hands as if it is a doll.

  Pearce pulls to a standing position. He squints up at the sun. He thinks about his strange hunger, which has conquered all. In the end it was this that won over sleep, that tightened bladder of a stomach folding in upon itself, gnawing and spitting acidic juice, keeping the sharp eyes of Alexander Pearce keen, alert.

  A few days later Alexander Pearce is found by a farmer. He is dismembering and eating a sheep, fresh from the field. The farmer knows Pearce, recognizes him—despite his strange table manners—as Irish and arms him. To the bush with you, Pearce. No fork-and-knife-boiled-mutton life for you. Pearce stays at large with other Irishmen, looting and hunted, murderously free, until he is finally caught.

  “What makes Pearce so special?” said Travis.

  “Well, he escaped with seven other men, but was the only one to survive,” I said.

  “You admire his determination?” said Travis.

  “Among other things,” I replied. My coffee had grown cold, so I got up to get some more. Pearce was not tried for cannibalism, although he readily confessed. He explained with pride his small act of survival. The authorities, confusing the truth with altruism, decided he was lying in order to create a myth of death around the others, who could at this very moment be boarding a Dutch freighter bound for Indonesia. They bundled Pearce off to Macquarie Harbor and determine to keep better guard over him.

  “Pearce was also the only man to escape Macquarie twice,” I added.

  “Why didn’t they hang him the first time?” asked Arthur.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe they admired him.”

  The second time Alexander Pearce escaped by land. Despite Pearce’s history, he had a willing companion, a Thomas Cox. Who can say what Cox had heard? Pearce was legendary. The other convicts revered him. To escape and return to tell about it was an accomplishment; the substance of Pearce’s stories was of little consequence. Cox and Pearce traveled together, but apparently had a falling out over the fact that Cox could not swim. This is understandable when you consider the rush the men were in and the fact that they were standing on the bank of the King’s River. When the authorities caught up with Pearce (they were in a boat and sighted him by his campfire high on a cliff) they were horrified to discover that although Cox was with him, Cox was not whole, as much of his body had been eaten by Pearce, although Pearce still had bread on him, as well as salted beef. But the beef smelled rancid, the bread was peppered with mold, and here, high on the cliff, with Macquarie far enough and the city of Hobart beyond reach, Mother England—the old bitch—clinging like a barnacle to the earth’s distant backside, a man like Pearce could live and breathe. A man like Pearce could eat his meat in peace. So when the arresting party interrupted his meal, Pearce had no apology and little to say. He managed the comment, “The best eating’s the upper arms.” Good advice for these soldiers who, despite their freedom, seemed to need a few pointers on how to use it.

  Outside, the sound of a truck moving down the drive announced that we would soon have heat. But Australia was still appealing. Fifty years after Pearce, Captain Thomas Dudley, tried for cannibalism in England and found innocent, sought sanctuary in Australia. They called him “Cannibal Tom,” but it didn’t stop him from becoming a successful businessman. He is entered in the history books twice: first, for eating his cabin boy, and second for being the first person in Australia to die of bubonic plague. He was, I supposed, another hero of mine, but I thought it best to keep this to myself.

  24

  Travis was very polite and in a strange way I think both Arthur and I appreciated having him there to absorb some of the silence. He also had a take-charge quality, and it was Travis who tracked down Johnny’s family (three brothers, one sister, an uncle, and his mother) and broke the news to them. He told them how the police thought the murderer was Bad Billy, that although the lab had been unable to lift any prints from the shovel, they had identified the teeth marks as human. We had all admired Johnny, Travis said, and he would be missed. But that wasn’t really true. Travis had never met Johnny—at least not alive—and even I was losing my discomfort and sadness at his passing. As the police presence began to thin out I found myself saying, “Johnny’s dead. Johnny’s dead. Johnny’s dead.” But it was more out of guilt of not missing him than actual sorrow. My burgeoning fears had subsided too, as if all the uncommon events of the last few months were the work of my overactive and powerful imagination.

  A couple of weeks went by. Travis was working on a novel. I wasn’t sure when he was leaving, and he seemed fairly content. He seemed to think he was in an adventure, although Arthur and I weren’t that exciting, as far as I could tell. Maybe Travis was embellishing us. Arthur was spending more time in town and it seemed that we had established a routine. Travis had set his old Olympia up in the end room on a sewing machine stand. I could hear the endless sputter of his keys, noted a pile of bottles in the corner of the room—no more Maker’s Mark but something called Evan Williams, which made up for its taste with an aggressive cheapness. Travis never seemed drunk to me, although at times he was louder than others, and sometimes his humor was a bit off-color, but he was always funny.

  He liked to walk around in hi
s boots, even in the house. His wore his jeans tight and shaved every morning, even though there was no one around to care. He cared. He even ironed his shirts, in strict adherence to some sort of code of honor.

  “Do you use starch?” I asked him one morning.

  “No, Ma’am.”

  “What do you write about all day in your little room?”

  He set down the iron. “Now why would I tell you that? Let’s just wait till the damn thing sells, and then you can buy it with some of that Boris money.”

  “I think we’ve all gotten enough out of Boris,” I said. “Go on, Travis, let me have a peek.”

  “At least wait until I have a complete draft.”

  “How much do you have now?”

  “About a hundred pages.”

  “In only two weeks?”

  “The question you should ask is, ‘Is it any good?’”

  “Is it any good?”

  “Depends on the weather, the tide, and how drunk I am.” Travis turned off the iron and shook out his shirt. There was no wrinkle on it and somehow he had made everything symmetrical, the sleeves, the collar. He put the shirt on over his undershirt and carefully did up the buttons.

  “Do you need any help?” I asked.

  “Darling,” Travis said, “you must be dying of boredom.”

  “Not boredom,” I said. “But I’m hungry. Starving. I have an idea. Why don’t you go out and get some firewood and I’ll make us a real breakfast. Bacon. Eggs. Gravy.”

  “Where’s the firewood?”

  “You’re going to have to walk around the woods and chop some up. Should help you work up an appetite.”

  “Where’s Arthur?”

  “He’s in town hunting down a violin string and a new shirt.”

  “Is he auditioning?”

  I nodded. “An Irish band. They do weddings and have a few regular gigs, some in Boston. He thinks it could be steady money.”

  “I hope it works out,” said Travis. “I’ll go get the wood.”

  “Don’t mess your shirt up,” I said.

  As soon as Travis was out the door, I set out the eggs and bacon for breakfast, then went down the corridor to his room. There was a manuscript—loose sheets neatly stacked—on the floor beside the typewriter. The title of the manuscript, stricken through but still clear, said Angeline.

  I read the first ten pages or so, which had a flat, meandering western tone. The description was good—the landscape wide and open, foreboding and peaceful at the same time, and so far the most animated character in the story. Angeline, half Mexican, half not, makes her appearance right before a tornado hits. Her faded floral dress and long black hair blow straight out sideways; her face is inscrutable, but edging toward happy at all the destruction. Somehow, in the tornado, her house is destroyed and Roy, her abusive husband twice her age, is beheaded by a flying piece of tin roofing. Angeline rents a room at our hero, Dan’s, mother’s house. Angeline keeps working at the diner, as she did before the tornado. Dan develops an obsession with her, although she’s five years his senior and he’s still dating his high-school sweetheart, Shirla.

  I flipped through reading a page here and a page there. Dan goes to war (what war?) and returns decorated and jaded. I suppose it was Vietnam, but my flipping through the manuscript made the whole thing unclear. Some unspeakable tragedy has happened in Dan’s absence. Shirla is now fat, married to Dan’s high-school buddy with the clubfoot (how had I missed him?) and Angeline has taken to living with some crazy Indian twenty miles from the nearest town.

  I turned to the last few pages. It’s a confrontation between Angeline and Dan. Dan is holding a wrench, so I suppose he’s there to fix something. The blades of windmill push light then shadow through the open window, giving Angeline a flickering, noir aspect.

  “What happened to Bobby Whitefoot?” Dan asks, accusingly.

  “He’s dead. Drowned.”

  “I don’t think so, Angeline. I think you’ve been running too long.”

  “What do you think happened, Dan?”

  “You know what I think.”

  “I do,” says Angeline. She knots her hair into a bun and goes over the sink. She begins washing the dishes and Dan watches her slim arms dipping in and out of the suds. It’s hot and her dress is clinging to the backs of her thighs. Finally, Angeline is done with the dishes. She turns and Dan is gripping his wrench, white-knuckled. She says, “I’ll bet you want to know just what happened on the bridge that night, that night at Bear Creek.”

  And Dan says, “I think it’s time you told someone.”

  And I hoped Angeline would because I wanted to know what had happened at Bear Creek, even though I’d missed every reference to it. I thought the big tragedy (referred to on and off) had been Shirla’s impressive weight gain.

  So Angeline dries her hands on her apron. (Here Travis had a note saying “apron? or just on her skirt.”)

  “You’d been gone about a year then, Dan. No one came to the diner anymore and Old Abner really didn’t have a choice. He had to let me go. That’s how I ended up with Bobby Whitefoot.”

  “Now Katherine, that’s not nice.”

  I turned quickly, dropping the manuscript. Pages fluttered all around me. “Fuck you, Travis,” I said. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “Well, fuck you too,” he said, laughing. “I don’t have my pages numbered.”

  “I’m sorry I dropped it,” I said.

  “How about reading it?” he smiled.

  “No. No, I’m really not sorry about that.” I thought for a minute. “I should be.”

  “Yes, you should,” said Travis. He was on the floor trying to preserve the order of his manuscript, which luckily had fanned out and could be set back in order in a few stacks with a only a handful of rogue pages.

  “I’ll go get the food on,” I said.

  “All right.” Travis stood up. “I’ll light a fire.”

  “Travis,” I said. I fixed his collar, which really didn’t need fixing. “What happened to Bobby Whitefoot?”

  “I can’t tell you that. Can I?”

  “She killed him, didn’t she? Angeline did.”

  “You’ll have to wait until the book’s finished.”

  “What happened at Bear Creek?”

  “Darling . . .”

  “Come on, Travis. You can tell me.”

  “It’s a story, Katherine. I make this stuff up.”

  “What happens to Dan?”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Angeline?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “I found it fascinating. Now answer the question. What happens to Dan?”

  “To tell you truth, I don’t know yet. But I have a hunch nothing good comes of his love for Angeline. A woman like that is trouble and that’s just the way it has to be.”

  “Reader expectation?” I asked.

  “Life,” he replied.

  Arthur was home by eight. He swung the door open happily. He was carrying a bunch of flowers that I knew he’d picked out himself—sunflowers, teddy-bear chrysanthemums, starburst lilies, and a huge pink English rose.

  “Katherine!” he said. Kevin was jumping all over him and I had to rescue the flowers. “Why didn’t you answer the phone? I’ve been calling since five.”

  “We have to get caller ID,” I said. “I thought anyone who was that persistent had to be Boris.”

  “I wanted you to come into town and meet the band. We went out for a few drinks.”

  “Did you bring me something?”

  “A twenty-dollar bottle of red wine.”

  “Well, I’m happy for you. And I hope this turns into something both fun and lucrative. And the flowers are gorgeous.” I smiled.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve had a headache this afternoon, but it’s gone now.”

  Arthur put the bottle of wine on the counter. He took off his jacket and I could see the fold lines on his new shirt. There was even a pin poking out of the colla
r tab.

  “Where’d you get the shirt?”

  “Levinsky’s. Sleeves are a bit short, but it was only twelve dollars.”

  “I am happy, and happy for you. Open that bottle and I’ll perk right up.”

  Arthur pulled out the cork and got the glasses down from the cabinet. “Where’s Travis?”

  “Travis,” I said, “hitchhiked into Portland and is taking the Greyhound back to Texas.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “We had a bit of a misunderstanding,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  “He was getting a little too interested in me and I thought it was better if he headed home. Arthur, nothing happened, but if he’d stayed here, it would have been rather awkward.” I found the cigarettes in Arthur’s jacket pocket and lit one. “We left on good terms. No one’s angry at anyone and he said to keep in touch. I even helped him out with the bus ticket.”

  “Wow,” said Arthur.

  “Did you like Travis?”

  “Travis is a trip. He’s so, I don’t know, cowboy.”

  “Yes.”

  “But hey,” said Arthur, shaking me by the shoulders, “it’s just the two of us. What a novelty.”

  “What a treat.”

  Arthur sat down to learn a couple of tunes, because he had a practice the next day and a wedding the day after that. The wedding was in Boston and the payment was a thousand dollars, to be split among four musicians. “And they play in town at Brian Boru’s on Thursdays and usually somewhere else during the week. We have at least one gig every weekend into March. Even some Christmas parties. One New Year’s Eve thing in town, where we’re making double.”

  “Timely,” I said. “We’ll be rich.”

  “I needed something, after what happened to Intravenous...”

  “What happened to Intravenous?”

  “Park stopped showing up for practice,” Arthur said. “You knew that. I told you when you were in Mexico.”