Classics Mutilated

by John Shirley

  “I just thought I was confused before,” I said.

  “All right,” Brer Rabbit said. “It ain’t like we’re going anywhere now, and it ain’t like they'll be coming. They'll be sheltering up somewhere nearby to get out of the Warning Rain. So, I’ll tell you what you want to know. Just ask.”

  “I’ll make it easy,” I said. “Tell us all of it.”

  And he did. Now, no disrespect to Brer Rabbit, but once he got going, he was a dad burn blabbermouth. He told us all we wanted to know, and all manner of business we didn’t want to know. I think it’s best I just summarize what he was saying, keeping in mind it’s possible I’ve left out some of the important parts, but mostly, I can assure you, I’ve left out stuff you don’t want to hear anyway. We even got a few pointers on how to decorate a burrow, which seemed to be a tip we didn’t need.

  The rain got so thick it put those burning trees out, and with the moon behind clouds, it was dark in that cave. We couldn’t even see each other. All we could do was hear Brer Rabbit’s voice, which was a little squeaky.

  What he was telling us was, there was gonna be some kind of ceremony. That whoever the weasels could catch was gonna be a part of it. It wasn’t no ceremony where there was cake and prizes and games, least not any that was fun. It was gonna be a ceremony in honor of this fella he called Cut Through You.

  According to Brer Rabbit, the island wasn’t always a bad place. He and his family had lived here, along with all the other brother and sister animals, or whatever the hell they were, until Brer Fox found the stones and the book wrapped in skin. That’s how Brer Rabbit put it. The book wrapped in skin.

  Brer Fox, he wasn’t never loveable, and Brer Rabbit said right up front, he used to pull tricks on him and Brer Bear all the time. They was harmless, he said, and they was mostly just to keep from getting eaten by them two. 'Cause as nice a place as it was then as measured up against now, it was still a place where meat eaters lived alongside them that wasn’t meat eaters, which meant them that ate vegetables was the meat eater’s lunch, if they got caught. Brer Rabbit said he figured that was just fair play. That was how the world worked, even if their island wasn’t exactly like the rest of the world.

  It dropped out of the sky come the full moon and ended up in the big wide middle of the Mississippi. It stayed that way for a few hours, and then come the Warning Rain, as he called it, the one we was having now; the one full of lighting and thunder and hard falling water. It meant they was more than halfway through their time to be on the Mississippi, then there was gonna come the Soft Rain. It didn’t have no lighting in it. It was pleasant. At least until the sky opened up and the wind came down and carried them away.

  “Where does it take you?” I asked.

  Brer Rabbit shook his head. “I don’t know I can say. We don’t seem to know nothing till we come back. And when we do, well, we just pick up right where we was before. Doing whatever it was we was doing. So if Brer Fox has me by the neck, and the time comes, and we all get sucked away, when it blows back, we gonna be right where we was; it’s always night and always like things was when we left them.”

  He said when that funnel of wind dropped them back on the island, sometimes it brought things with it that wasn’t there before. Like people from other places. Other worlds, he said. That didn’t make no sense at all to me. But that’s what he said. He said sometimes it brought live people, and sometimes it brought dead people, and sometimes it brought Brer People with it, and sometimes what it brought wasn’t people at all. He told us about some big old crawdads come through once, and how they chased everyone around, but ended up being boiled in water and eaten by Brer Bear, Brer Fox, and all the weasels, who was kind of butt kissers to Brer Fox.

  Anyway, not knowing what was gonna show up on the island, either by way of that Sticky Storm—as he named it ’cause everything clung to it—or by way of the Mississippi, made things interesting; right before it got too interesting. The part that was too interesting had to do with Brer Fox and that Book of Skin.

  Way Brer Rabbit figured, it come through that hole in the sky like everything else. It was clutched in a man’s hand, and the man was deader than a rock, and he had what Brer Rabbit said was a towel or a rag or some such thing wrapped around his head.

  Brer Rabbit said he seen that dead man from a hiding place in the woods, and Uncle Remus was with him when he did. Uncle Remus had escaped slavery and come to the island. He fit in good. Stayed in the burrow with Brer Rabbit and his family, and he listened to all their stories.

  But when the change come, when that book showed up, and stuff started happening because of it, he decided he’d had enough and tried to swim back to shore. Things he saw made him think taking his chance on drowning, or getting caught and being a slave again, was worth it. I don’t know how he felt later, but he sure got caught, since Jim knew him and had heard stories about Dread Island from him.

  “He left before things really got bad,” Brer Rabbit said. “And did they get bad. He was lucky.”

  “That depends on how you look at it,” Jim said. “I done been a slave, and I can’t say it compares good to much of anything.”

  “Maybe,” Brer Rabbit said. “Maybe.”

  And then he went on with his story.

  Seems that when the storm brought that dead man clutching that book, Brer Fox pried it out of his hands and opened it up and found it was written in some foreign language, but he could read it. Brer Rabbit said one of the peculiars about the island is that everyone—except the weasels, who pretty much got the short end of the stick when it come to smarts—could read or speak any language there was.

  Now, wasn’t just the book and the dead man come through, there was the stones. They had fallen out of the sky at the same time. There was also a mass of black goo with dying and dead fish in it that come through, and it splattered all over the ground. The stones was carved up. The main marking was a big eye, then there was all manner of other scratchings and drawings. And though the Brer Folk could read or speak any language possible, even the language in that book, they couldn’t speak or read what was on them stones. It had been put together by folk spoke a tongue none of their mouths would fit around. Least at first.

  Brer Fox went to holding that book dear. Everyone on the island knew about it, and he always carried it in a pack on his back. Brer Bear, who was kind of a kiss ass like the weasels, but smarter than they was—and, according to Brer Rabbit, that was a sad thing to think about, since Brer Bear didn’t hardly have the sense to get in out of the Warning Rain—helped Brer Fox set them stones up in that black muck. Every time the storm brought them back, that’s what they did, and pretty soon they had the weasels helping them.

  Fact was, Brer Fox all but quit chasing Brer Rabbit. He instead sat and read by firelight and moonlight, and started chanting, ’cause he was learning how to say that language that he couldn’t read before, the language on the stones, and he was teaching Brer Bear how to do the same. And one time, well, the island stayed overnight.

  “It didn’t happen but that once,” Brer Rabbit said. “But come daylight, here we still was. And it stayed that way until the next night come, and finally before next morning, things got back to the way they was supposed to be. Brer Fox had some power from that book and those stones, and he liked it mighty good.”

  Now and again he’d chant something from the book, and the air would fill with an odor like rotting fish, and then that odor got heavy and went to whirling about them stones; it was an odor that made the stomach crawl and the head fill with all manner of sickness and worry and grief.

  Once, while Brer Rabbit was watching Brer Fox chant, while he was smelling that rotten fish stink, he saw the sky crack open, right up close by the moon. Not the way it did when the Sticky Storm come, which was when everything turned gray and the sky opened up and a twister of sorts dropped down and sucked them all up. It was more like the night sky was just a big black sheet, and this thing with one, large, nasty, rolling eye and more le
gs than a spider—and ropey legs at that—poked through and pulled at the night.

  For a moment, Brer Rabbit thought that thing—which from Brer Fox’s chanting he learned was called Cut Through You—was gonna take hold of the moon and eat it like a flap jack. It had a odd mouth with a beak, and it was snapping all the while.

  Then, sudden like, it was sucked back, like something got hold of one of its legs and yanked it plumb out of sight. The sky closed up and the air got clean for a moment, and it was over with.

  After that, Brer Fox and ole One Eye had them a connection. Every time the island was brought back, Brer Fox would go out there and stand in that muck, or sit on a rock in the middle of them carved stones, and call out to Cut Through You. It was a noise, Brer Rabbit said, sounded like someone straining at toilet while trying to cough and yodel all at the same time.

  Brer Fox and Brer Bear was catching folk and tying them to the stones. People from the Mississippi come along by accident; they got nabbed too, mostly by the weasels. It was all so Brer Fox could have Cut Through You meetings.

  Way it was described to me, it was kind of like church. Except when it come time to pass the offering, the sky would crack open, and ole Cut Through You would lean out and reach down and pull folk tied to the stones up there with him.

  Brer Rabbit said he watched it eat a bunch a folk quicker than a mule skinner could pop goober peas; chawed them up and spat them out, splattered what was left in that black mud that was all around the stones.

  That was what Brer Fox and Brer Bear, and all them weasels, took to eating. It changed them. They went from sneaky and hungry and animal like, to being more like men. Meaning, said Brer Rabbit, they come to enjoy cruelty. And then Brer Fox built the Tar Baby, used that book to give it life. It could do more work than all of them put together, and it set up the final stones by itself. Something dirty needed to be done, it was Tar Baby done it. You couldn’t stop the thing, Brer Rabbit said. It just kept on a coming, and a coming.

  But the final thing Brer Rabbit said worried him, was that each time Cut Through You came back, there’s more and more of him to be seen, and it turned out there’s a lot more of Cut Through You than you’d think; and it was like he was hungrier each time he showed.

  Bottom line, as figured by Brer Rabbit, was this: if Brer Fox and his bunch didn’t supply the sacrifices, pretty soon they’d be sacrifices themselves.

  Brer Rabbit finished up his story, and it was about that time the rain quit. The clouds melted away and the moonlight was back. It was clear out, and you could see a right smart distance.

  I said, “You ain’t seen a couple of fellas named Tom and Joe, have you? One of them might be wearing a straw hat. They’re about my age and size, but not quite as good looking.”

  Brer Rabbit shook his head. “I ain’t,” he said. “But they could be with all the others Brer Fox has nabbed of late. Was they on the riverboat run aground?”

  I shook my head.

  Jim said, “Huck, you and me, we got to get back to the raft and get on out of this place, Tom and Joe or not.”

  “That’s right,” Brer Rabbit said. “You got to. Oh, I wish I could go with you.”

  “You’re invited,” I said.

  “Ah, but there is the thorn in the paw. I can’t go, ’cause I do, come daylight, if I ain’t on this island, I disappear, and I don’t come back. Though to tell you true, that might be better than getting ate up by Cut Through You. I’ll give it some considering.”

  “Consider quick,” Jim said, “we got to start back to the raft.”

  “What we got to do,” Brer Rabbit said, “is we got to go that way.”

  He pointed.

  “Then,” he said, “we work down to the shore, and you can get your raft. And I’m thinking I might just go with you and turn to nothing. I ain’t got no family now. I ain’t got nothing but me, and part of me is missing, so the rest of me might as well go missing too.”

  Jim said, “I got my medicine bag with me. I can’t give you your paw back, but I can take some of the hurt away with a salve I got.”

  Jim dressed Brer Rabbit’s paw, and when that was done, he got some wool string out of that little bag he had on his belt and tied up his hair—which had grown long—in little sheaves, like dark wheat. He said it was a thing to do to keep back witches.

  I pointed out witches seemed to me the least of our worries, but he done it anyway, with me taking my pocketknife out of my back pocket to cut the string for him.

  When he had knotted his hair up in about twenty gatherings, we lit out for the raft without fear of witches.

  Way we went made it so we had to swim across a creek that was deep in places. It was cold water, like that blue hole we had jumped in, and there was fish in it. They was curious and would bob to the top and look at us; their eyes was shiny as wet stones in the moonlight.

  On the other side of the creek, we stumbled through a patch of woods, and down a hill, and then up one that led us level with where we had been before. In front of us was more dark woods. Brer Rabbit said beyond the trees was the shoreline, and we might be able to get to our raft if the weasels hadn’t found it. Me and Jim decided if they had, we’d try for Tom’s and Joe’s boat and wish them our best. If their boat was gone, then, there was nothing left but to hit that Mississippi and swim for it. We had about as much chance of making that swim as passing through the eye of a needle, but it was a might more inviting than Cut Through You. Least, that way we had a chance. Me and Jim was both good swimmers, and maybe we could even find a log to push off into the water with us. As for Brer Rabbit, well, he was thinking on going with us and just disappearing when daylight come; that was a thing made me really want to get off that island. If he was willing to go out that way, then that Cut Through You must be some nasty sort of fella. Worse yet, our salt had got all wet and wasn’t worth nothing, and we had both lost the cross in our shoes. All we had was those rusty nails on strings, and I didn’t have a whole lot of trust in that. I was more comfortable that I still had my little knife in my back pocket.

  We was coming down through the woods, and it got so the trees were thinning, and we could see the bank down there, the river churning along furious like. My heart was starting to beat in an excited way, and about then, things turned to dog doo.

  The weasels come down out of the trees on ropes, and a big net come down with them and landed over us. It was weighed down with rocks, and there wasn’t no time to get out from under it before they was tugging it firm around us, and we was bagged up tighter than a strand of gut packed with sausage makings.

  As we was laying there, out of the woods come Brer Fox and Brer Bear. They come right over to us. The fox bent down, and he looked Brer Rabbit in the eye. He grinned and showed his teeth. His breath was so sour we could smell it from four feet away; it smelled like death warmed over and gone cold again.

  Up close, I could see things I couldn’t see before in the night. He had fish scales running along the side of his face, and when he breathed there were flaps that flared out on his cheeks; they was gills, like a fish.

  I looked up at Brer Bear. There were sores all over his body, and bits of fish heads and fish tails poking out of him like moles. He was breathing in and out, like bellows being worked to start up a fresh fire.

  “You ain’t looking so good,” Brer Rabbit said.

  “Yeah,” Brer Fox said, “but looks ain’t everything. I ain’t looking so good, but you ain’t doing so good.”

  Brer Fox slung his pack off his back and opened it. I could see there was a book in there, the one bound up in human skin. You could see there was a face on the cover, eyes, nose, mouth, and some warts. But that wasn’t what Brer Fox was reaching for. What he was reaching for was Brer Rabbit’s paw, which was stuffed in there.

  “Here’s a little something you left back at the ceremony spot.” He held up the paw and waved it around. “That wasn’t nice. I had plans for you. But, you know what? I got a lucky rabbit’s foot now. Though, to te
ll the truth, it ain’t all that lucky for you, is it?”

  He put the paw in his mouth and clamped down on it and bit right through it and chewed on it some. He gave what was left of it to Brer Bear, who ate it up in one big bite.

  “I figured you wouldn’t be needing it,” Brer Fox said.

  “Why, I’m quite happy with this nubbing,” Brer Rabbit said. “I don’t spend so much time cleaning my nails now.”

  Brer Fox’s face turned sour, like he had bitten into an unripe persimmon. “There ain’t gonna be nothing of you to clean after tonight. And in fact, we got to go quick like. I wouldn’t want you to miss the meeting, Brer Rabbit. You see, tonight, he comes all the way through, and then, me and my folk, we’re gonna serve him. He’s gonna go all over the Mississippi, and then all over the world. He’s gonna rule, and I’m gonna rule beside him. He told me. He told me in my head.”

  With those last words, Brer Fox tapped the side of his head with a finger.

  “You gonna get ate up like everyone else,” Brer Rabbit said. “You just a big ole idiot.”

  Brer Fox rose up, waved his hand over his head, yelled out, “Bring them. And don’t be easy about it. Let’s blood them.”

  What that meant was they dragged us in that net. We was pressed up tight together, and there was all manner of stuff on the ground to stick us, and we banged into trees and such, and it seemed like forever before we broke out of the woods and I got a glimpse at the place we was going.

  Right then I knew why it was Brer Rabbit would rather just disappear.

  We was scratched and bumped up and full of ticks and chiggers and poison ivy by the time we got to where we was going, and where we was going didn’t have no trees and there wasn’t nothing pretty about it.

  There was this big stretch of black mud. You could see dead fish in it, and some of them was mostly bones, but there were still some flopping about. They were fish I didn’t recognize. Some had a lot of eyes and big teeth and were shaped funny.