A World Elsewhere (12 page)

No, fish didn’t have ears, so they must be deaf. Did fish have noses? Maybe. He would closely examine the nose of his next fish. He wasn’t sure how fish did their pee. Or where. Somewhere private. That wasn’t
where all the water came from, but yes it would be funny if it was. Yes, that might be why the ocean was so salty.

He had never seen a fish chewing food or throwing up.

Fish had no lashes, so they never blinked.

He gripped the edges of the tub, meaning to climb out, but nothing happened. He tried again and rose up streaming water. The room spun. If he overturned the tub, the water would run downstairs into Hogan’s kitchen, and Hogan would report it to the nobleman.

A fine ending for the Druken line, his father would have said. A child’s death, not a man’s. Nothing but a swimming hole named after him. The hole where Druken drowned. That wouldn’t get you the OBE or a dinner from the Board of Trade. He shook his head and counted his fingers. His eyes looked like they did when he was angry. Landish tried to clench his teeth. He splashed water on Deacon but didn’t laugh or say he was sorry. He closed his eyes, then opened them as if he’d heard a noise.

He got dressed and quickly heated for the boy a bowl of turr stew from the last seabird of the larder.

“Are you having any?” Deacon said.

Landish said he didn’t feel like eating.

“What does the ice look like from underneath?” Deacon said.

He managed to say it was probably like when you took the pie crust off to see the other side. He heard the boy say he had never done that because he had never had a pie. He heard himself promising him a pie so that he could see what the under-ice was like. He said he thought he needed a nap. If he had been stronger to begin with—but he had eaten even less than usual every day for ten days.

He told Deacon he was going to climb into bed for a while. Deacon said it wasn’t bedtime yet. Just for a bit, Landish said, to get warm, just until the shaking stops. He said he wouldn’t go to sleep. Deacon could climb in with him if he wanted to, but he didn’t feel up to reading to him from a book or telling him a story. As he tumbled onto the bed, he heard Deacon say something about the kitchen.

Landish kicked the blankets off, thinking they were snow.

He folded his arms and drew his knees up to his chest. He wondered where the others were. They knew as well as he did what to do when you were lost and couldn’t find your way back to your ship.

But they were young and not as strong as he.

It was one thing to know you mustn’t run, another to resist the urge. Foolish things made perfect sense. Lighten yourself of everything that made it hard to run, encumbrances such as coats and boots. Shed your clothes so you could breathe. He knew he should be on his feet. His father said that if you fell you must get up, you must. Don’t sacrifice yourself for nothing. Don’t die just so that another man won’t have to die alone. Don’t die just to keep him company. Each man goes by himself to the place from which no one knows the way back home. Even the young, the weak, the blameless and the kind of heart. Don’t be like Carson of the
Gilbert
who stayed with his men even though they were already goners and he could have saved himself.

Deacon said his name and clapped his hands close to his face, but Landish never moved. He seemed unaware of him though his eyes were open and going slowly from side to side like they did when he thought so much he couldn’t sleep.

His undershirt, long johns, face and hair were as wet as when he came out of the river. But now they were wet with sweat. There was a yellow halo of it on his pillow. His face was red like when he dug holes in July. Deacon tried the window, but it wouldn’t budge. He thought of telling Hogan that Landish wasn’t right, but he had promised Landish he would never leave the attic by himself. And the nobleman might come or the nuns who were nurses too, so he threw some water on the fire and stabbed it with the poker until the coals went out.

He turned the lantern down until the flame was blue. His shadow stretched across the floor and halfway up the wall. He was afraid to turn his back on it. It scared him when he moved.

He put on his hat and coat and boots, took a chair from the kitchen and set it by the bed. He sat and looked at Landish.

When Landish shivered and clacked his teeth, he covered him with blankets that Landish pulled tight around him until he began to sweat again and threw them off.

At times, it sounded like he was speaking to someone. He spoke, waited, spoke again, but Deacon couldn’t understand a word.

You saw what wasn’t there. You looked straight through what was.

A man stood over him. He shook his head and walked away.

Now there were a man, a woman and a boy. What were a woman and a boy doing on the
Gilbert?
They must have fooled his father.

The boy sat on the man’s shoulders, the woman linked arms with the man. The three of them looked down at him.

The man said: “We can’t just leave him here.”

But the woman said the sun was setting and the boy was sick.

“He’s a goner, like the others,” the woman said. “There’s no point holding hands with goners. Let them hold each other’s hands.”

He filled a cup with water and brought it to the bed. “Sit up,” he said. “Please, Landish, sit up. Have some water.”

But Landish lay there, eyes darting about even as he smiled, too canny to be fooled by a voice that offered water.

Deacon went closer, held the cup to his lips, and tilted it slightly until some drops spilled out, ran down his chin onto his throat.

“Landish, wake up,” he shouted, and shook him by the arm.

Landish swung his arm and the back of his hand caught the peak
of Deacon’s cap. He dropped to his hands and knees, grabbed his hat and crawled away from the bed. Landish rolled onto his side, his back to Deacon.

He moved closer to the bed but out of range of Landish in case he rolled onto his back and swung out his arm again. He looked at Landish and the massive shadow of him on the wall.

He lay down on the floor beside the bed.

There were no blankets. He’d been sleeping as he did on the warmest summer nights, covered by nothing but his long johns. He listened for the sound of horses’ hooves, but heard none. Evening, he guessed, unless today was Sunday.

Deacon was asleep on the floor. A kitchen chair that bore an empty lantern faced the bed. He could tell by the light at the porthole window that it was either early morning or early evening. It was so cold in the attic that he could see his breath. Long plumes of it each time he exhaled. Deacon lay on his side, dressed for the outdoors. Landish tried to rouse him. The boy woke momentarily but shook his head and curled up tighter as he always did when Landish came to wake him in the morning.

Landish sat up, swung his legs out over the bed and onto the floor. He picked up Deacon and barely managed to stand.

He laid Deacon in the bed and covered him with blankets. He removed his hat and boots but otherwise left him as he was. He put on his own clothes and went out to the kitchen.

Only minutes later, the boy came up behind him in the kitchen and wrapped his arms around him in a leg hug. Landish crouched down and gave him a hug, and upon standing became so dizzy that he lurched across the room. He caught himself from falling by grabbing the back of a chair.

“I’m not all better yet,” he said. He asked Deacon if it was Thursday, but Deacon shook his head and said he thought it was Friday but it might be Saturday. He said the last time he had eaten was when he
finished the stew that Landish had made. The boy looked as if he had fought an illness of his own for the past two days and nights. Landish found some potatoes and fried them up with a block of fatback. He ate as much as he could stand to, then went downstairs, where Hogan told him it was Friday.

“I’ve been sick,” he said. Hogan looked at him as if he had last seen him lurching up the stairs with a bottle in his hand.

Landish remembered almost nothing of the past two days, far less than the boy did and would forever carry with him. He thought of the empty chair that faced the bed when he woke up. He could think of no illness against which the boy would have a chance.

“Where are you going?” Deacon said.

“Out.”

“Where? You said you wouldn’t leave me here by myself, especially at night.”

“Just this once, all right?”

He wouldn’t be long, he said, maybe an hour at the most, and all Deacon had to do was stay put and wait.

“Will you be gone a long time?” Deacon asked.

“Don’t leave the attic,” Landish said. “Don’t go near the lanterns or the fireplace or the stove, all right?”

Deacon knew by heart the things he mustn’t do. He didn’t even nod his head while Landish spoke. Landish wouldn’t look him in the eye. It was like he was talking to someone else over Deacon’s shoulder.

“I won’t be long,” Landish said. “I have to go where boys are not allowed so I can get some things we need, all right?”

Landish didn’t care that Deacon knew that none of it was true. “You might be asleep when I get back, so leave the door unbolted,” was the last thing he said before he closed the door and went downstairs.

Deacon threw a few coals on the fire, more because Landish told
him not to than because he was cold. He felt like going down the stairs as far as Hogan’s kitchen, knowing that Hogan would tell Landish if he did. If Landish’s book were on the table now, he’d throw it in the fireplace. Landish thought he couldn’t reach the closet shelf, but he could if he used his own bamboo fishing pole. He could get the sealskin hat and burn that too. He could burn Gen of Eve and he could burn the vouchers. He could get past Hogan if he wanted to.

He stared at the fire for a while. He bolted the door and went to bed instead.

He woke to the sound of Landish banging on the door and shouting, “Let me in.” He ran across the kitchen and stood at the door. Landish sang “London Bridge” in a voice so loud Deacon covered his ears.

He let Landish in. Landish was decks awash.

“My fair lady,” Landish sang.

“Go to bed,” the boy said.

“I told you not to bolt the door,” Landish said.

He sat down at the table, all but knocking the chair over. Deacon sat in front of the fire. He drank grog from green bottles and poured Deacon a glass of cold lemonade from a bottle so he could join the party. Deacon didn’t decline it even though he thought he should.

Landish sang “London Bridge,” but he changed some words.

“Landish Druken’s falling down, falling down, falling down, Landish Druken’s falling down, my bare lady. Take the key and lock him up … Bone so strong will last so long, last so long …”

Landish laughed as he sang and laughed even harder when he looked at Deacon.

“He disapproves of man fun,” Landish said. “He thinks that boy fun is better even if you’re not a boy. Deacon fun is good, but Landish fun is bad. See the way he looks at me. Like he really is a deacon.”

“Who are you talking to?” Deacon said.

Landish laughed.

“What’s man fun?” Deacon said.

Landish told him he was sorry, and he looked like he was, for a while. He poured Deacon another glass of lemonade. Landish sang “London Bridge.” He made up more new words. Deacon sipped his lemonade.

He sang another song, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” just like “London Bridge.” Landish slumped onto the table with his head between his arms.

“Mark me, Deacon,” he muttered. “I have with an angel been abed. That’s what man fun is.”

“Dick and the happy couple?” Deacon said. He finished his lemonade.

“That’s right. Just like I told you.”

“Did you make a contribution?”

Landish laughed.

“You might bring another baby home,” Deacon said.

“No,” Landish said.

“Maybe a girl.”

“NO.”

Deacon started to cry. He said Landish was worse than Hogan, who was nothing but a lazy busybody, and so what that he was always in the kitchen when they were going up and down the stairs, he didn’t wake them up or beat on their door in the middle of the night. He said the Barnables on the first floor liked Hogan more than Landish because they were afraid of Landish. They hid because anyone with any sense would keep their distance from a Druken who was drunk. How would Landish like it if Hogan went out and came back singing songs? Landish didn’t care if Deacon stayed awake all night. He was worse than Captain Druken. Deacon went without his dinner because Landish couldn’t stand to go without a drink. What would his mother say if she could see him now, if she knew she’d left her boy with a sorry excuse?

Landish, his head on the table, seemed to be asleep.

Deacon did what Landish sometimes did when he was decks awash. He went downstairs and punched and kicked at Hogan’s door and said the whore who had him was ashamed to call him hers. He said it was high time he lugged his own business bucket out to Dark Marsh Road.
He shouted, “Don’t complain to Mr. Nobleman if you know what’s good for you.”

He kept hitting Hogan’s door until Landish came and carried him upstairs and drew the bolt.