The Whirlpool (17 page)

T
he Old River Man appeared at the screen door with a package, something damp, wrapped in brown paper. He had taken the long way around the garden, having noted that Jesus Christ and God Almighty, of whom he was deeply afraid, were outside of the stable, hitched up to the wagon. Horses were such large and obvious beasts of the earth, so foreign to water, that he would go miles out of his way to avoid them. Now, he stood at the screen door, clutching his parcel, looking nervously over his shoulder, checking to make sure the horses weren’t coming any closer.

Maud, who happened to be in the kitchen then, scowled at him from somewhere near the stove. Babies, sometimes even babies. Maud had no time for babies. She had told him over and over to leave the babies in the river. No one will claim them, she said, they are nobody’s children.

These babies were not like her little friends with their lovely little hands and feet. These were unwanted extensions of other women’s bodies.

“It’s not a baby,” the old man said now, aware of Maud’s frown.

She pushed open the door and walked outside to speak to him. The Old River Man stepped a few paces back and, after once again turning to note the location of the horses, he
placed the parcel on the ground in the shadow of a clump of Shasta daisies.

Within minutes Maud was writing:

So far that season, that spring and summer, there had been seventeen “floaters” for Maud to deal with. She knew precisely what it meant each time the Old River Man appeared at her back door under her defunct porch lamp. Their conversations, at these moments, were limited, almost ritualistic. Cap in hand, smelling of river, his hip-waders shining with moisture, he would wait for her to speak.

“Where?”

To this question there were only two possible answers: Maid of the Mist Landing or down by the whirlpool. It depended on the original location of the drowning and the currents of the river. At a certain place beyond the falls a decision was made by the water, some of which moved to the left, over to the dock, while the rest moved towards the lower rapids and eventually into the whirlpool. Left at the mercy of this kind of chance, the human remains ended their journey in either the former or the latter location, though, on certain occasions, if the trip had been particularly rough, they might end up in both.

Once the Old River Man had relayed his information, he would shift uneasily from foot to foot while his eyes slid to the corner cupboard where he knew his payment (in the form of a seemingly endless supply of Seagram’s whiskey) was kept. Then, bottle in hand, he would disappear through
a break at the end of the garden. This time the child had witnessed the close of the meeting and, looking directly at his mother, had said the word “whirlpool” in the River Man’s gravelly voice.

Within a matter of a few weeks the child had become a perfect mimic, repeating not only every word spoken but reproducing the tone, the pitch of the voice as well. Maud had to believe now that through the years that he had remained stubbornly silent, he had been digesting, verbatim, conversations, arguments, and harangues. And that he had been listening carefully (perhaps through the grates in the floor) to the funeral preparations, the carpenter’s chatter, the long, hysterical monologues of those who came to Grady and Son to choose a coffin for someone they loved.

Now, at least once a day, the child would repeat the whole performance: the sobs of the widow, Sam’s artificial condolences, the sales pitch, his voice adopting the tone of the speaker. After she had repeatedly tried and failed to interrupt the process, Maud found herself attempting to guess whose funeral he was playing back to her, as if she were involved in some form of tasteless parlour game. As she bent over her needlework and the child chattered, or whispered, or shouted in the corner, she would find herself commenting mentally, “Why that must have been Jake Warner’s,” or “That sounds like Mrs. Simpson after she lost her daughter Ella.” Then, shocked at her own complacency, she would cross the room, get down on her knees, and beg the child to stop, only to be answered by an exact reproduction of her own entreaty.

He was unpredictable. Sometimes he would go for days repeating only a word here and there.

“I’m going downstairs now,” Maud would say.

“Now,” the child would repeat.

Then, the next day he would break, quite suddenly, into a chorus of one of the embalmer’s lewd songs and in the embalmer’s tenor voice.

This turn of events began to affect all conversation at Grady and Son. Maud dared not discuss the neighbours’ activities with Sam for fear their words might be repeated during a friendly visit. This eliminated gossip. The child was light on his feet, moved like a cat. You never knew when he might be listening, or how far the sound of your own voice might travel. Slowly, but inevitably, the reversal took place. The child spoke constantly, his mother and her employees hardly at all.

Once, after a lengthy and gruelling interview with the relatives of a man who was drowned and buried, unidentified, some weeks before, Maud heard the child speaking in her voice in the evening, from deep in the darkness of his bedroom. He was reciting the same list she had recited to them. Hearing him, she was disturbed by the clipped, professional sound of her voice, cold, removed. “Apparently dark-complexioned,” the voice stated, “thumb and finger on left hand disfigured, light woollen underdrawers, upper teeth good, eyes apparently brown.”

Unable, finally, to bear it any longer, she threw open the door to his room with such force that the doorknob made an indentation in the adjacent plaster wall.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why are you doing this? You must stop, immediately, now, you must stop!”

“Stop!” the child shouted.

The sound of her own voice coming back to her, from the other side of the room.

The child borrowing her voice, shouting,
“STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP!”

Some summers the river was possessive of its dead and kept the flesh to itself. Then the Old River Man appeared at the back door only three or four times during the season, occasionally with news only of fragments. Maud could never
understand it; a season with twenty-nine or thirty river bodies followed by one with only two or three, and no obvious changes in the condition of humanity or the weather. But the Old River Man showed no surprise – only vague disappointment that the catch had been so small. He called these “dry summers,” more because of his lack of remuneration than with any reference to the river itself. But this year there had been a bumper crop and the old man was drunk most of the time, so much so that Maud began to worry that the whiskey might affect his ability to spot the drowned and battered flesh. Nonetheless he arrived with regularity, displaying only a slight stagger when he moved away again towards the end of the garden.

Maud was paid fifteen dollars per body by the city, in return for disposing quickly and quietly of these unpleasant embarrassments to the mighty tourist industry. The flesh itself did not bother her. She could hardly refer to it, in its condition, as human. It had changed beyond that, had become, instead, some other kind of element. It was the objects and bits of apparel that this flesh had attached to itself on the last day of its existence that both disturbed and fascinated her. And it was these things that she recorded and kept, though she knew that they were not destructible like the body, unless put to death by something stronger than water, something like fire. When she examined, and then began to list the contents of pockets, she was forced to remember that the thing before her, packed in ice, had been human… stupid, self-deluding, vain, tender. Then the questions would enter her mind and a relationship would form between her and the drowned flesh. A personality would develop behind the words, a life would take shape.

Why had this flesh dressed itself on the morning of its death? Why the choice of blue socks, or a blue tie-pin? Why the coins in the pocket, the rabbit’s foot, a
good luck
charm, religious medals around necks destined for annihilation, watches recording the exact moment of contact with the
water, rings with their precious stones missing, eyeglasses in the breast-pocket of a suit coat? Why the suit coat at all, when your destination is the river, the rocks?

The answers to these questions, which were not answers at all, mere speculations, built a frail network of history around each death. Maud’s collection of private legends, stored verbally in her notebook and concretely in her cupboard at the end of the hall. This was how she maintained order, how she gathered together some sense out of the chaos of the deaths around her.

As she closed her book after making a record of the tattooed arm, she recalled the sound of the child’s voice travelling through the garden.

“What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

His little voice, high and cracking in a bizarre parody of female sorrow.

8 August 1889

L
ast night Patrick suggested that we play hearts

Rain over the whirlpool and no fire to inspire talks about-battles and nationalism. Overcast and dark early – no celestial spectacles to discuss. So we were trapped, by lamplight, inside the tent
.

Patrick suggested that we play hearts and then, I’m sure, looked momentarily in my direction from his position at the opposite side of the table. David, used to playing poker at the camp, had never familiarized himself with the rules of this game. I had never played cards in my life
.

When three play (and I was eventually pressed into joining them), one must discard the two of spades before beginning. This, from Patrick, who seemed to know much about these games. He went on to say that it is customary for the eldest hand to lead. We all knew who that was
.

I was in charge of all the shuffling and dealing, Patrick insisting that I should deal to the right, thereby allowing David the first card and me the responsibility of giving it to him
.

The sole object of the game, Patrick informed me, was to rid yourself of all the hearts you may possess, because he
who ends up with the most is, oddly enough, the loser, not the winner
.

One aims, in this game, for the lowest possible score, and the highest card of any suit takes the trick
.

David foolishly placed an ace of hearts, worth fourteen points, on the table at the very beginning of the game
.

Patrick, knowing David would now have to take all, slapped a knave of hearts on top of it
.

I added a ten, my highest card in suit
.

At one point, when David had no clubs, he gave Patrick, who took that particular trick, the queen of hearts
.

I won, finishing with not a single heart, not a single point. Patrick came in second. David lost dramatically, managing to assemble, on his side of the table, almost every heart in the deck
.

Patrick was finding new ways to look at her – shadows and reflections. Once, while he was toying with a spoon, he had captured her face in it and had held it there while she, unaware, had continued to read a book. Once, for several moments, he had watched her reflected in her husband’s eyes. Tonight, while they played cards, he observed her head and shoulders as they appeared in the globe of a coal-oil lamp.

When the game was over, he walked to the opposite side of the tent. Picking up Fleda’s hand mirror, he adjusted it so that he could see her even though his back was turned. He could see all of her although she could see only his eyes in the mirror.

“You won,” he said to Fleda, not turning around.

She lowered her gaze, away from the strange, disembodied eyes in the mirror. “Yes, perhaps.”

The wind picked up, shaking the canvas walls around them.

Fleda’s eyes snapped back to the mirror he was holding. “Patrick,” she said. “Patrick… turn around.”

He stood motionless with the mirror in his hand.

“Patrick, please turn around.”

He placed the mirror back on the washstand and turned to face her. He is looking at me, she thought, as though I were an eclipse, too dangerous to be perceived directly.

“Patrick,” she continued, pulling herself out from the magnetic field he was creating, “are you going to persist with your idea about swimming?”

“Yes, I will be swimming soon. I believe you understand why.”

She thought she understood but wondered if he did. How much longer could she continue to play his vague, illusive games? Again, she had the feeling that they were discussing two subjects at once, or was it all the same thing?

“Maybe you could accomplish what you want by just watching it,” Fleda said.

“No, that’s not enough.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“Why isn’t watching the forest enough for you?” asked Patrick, turning the question back towards the woman.

Fleda became flushed, embarrassed. After all, this was really the most they had ever spoken to each other. “What is it that you want to prove?”

“What are you trying to prove living out here in the woods?”

“What does that matter?”

“It matters to me.”

Yes, thought Fleda. She remembered the day when she had stood under her black umbrella, looking down towards the whirlpool. She knew now that she had seen Patrick there, so far away that he would not have been recognizable. He must have been watching her, even then.

“Patrick,” she said softly, and then stopped. She could see David out of the corner of her eye, watching, listening to the progression of their conversation.

“What is it,” she eventually asked, “that you want?”

Patrick reached for his walking stick. Was she trying to deny him the whirlpool? “I thought,” he said quietly, “that you might see this, or at least you might try to.” He opened the canvas door of the tent. “Goodnight, David,” he said as he stepped out into the darkness.

The tent flap fell back into place. Fleda walked across the planking to her husband, then changed her mind. Moving swiftly to the table, she grabbed the lantern.

“He’ll need some light,” she told David as she hurried out of the tent.

Outside, she caught up to him easily. “Here,” she said thrusting the lantern into his hand. “I really do care, you know. What you think is important to me.” She grabbed his other hand with her own. “Patrick,” she said, pulling on his unresponsive arm. “I want to understand this.”

He faced her now, directly, in the circle of light. How strange she looked; shadows around her eyes, light on her cheekbones.

“Please tell me why you want to do it,” Fleda persisted, but quietly, coaxing, wanting him to speak to her.

This light I’m holding, he thought, makes everything not directly in its path much darker. He stood, silent with her, in the path of the light.

“How can you want me to understand and not tell me?”

“It’s just swimming,” he said softly.

“Oh no,” she said, “no, it isn’t. Nothing is just this or that anymore. Everything means something else… doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” he asked, looking towards the dark. “Yes… I suppose it does.”

The wind began to rise in earnest. It moved the flame under the glass in the lantern so that the shadows of the man and the woman leapt into elongation and shrank again, suddenly, on the forest floor.

“You’d better go back to the tent,” Patrick said slowly, but not unkindly. Then, taking the light with him, he turned away and left her in the darkness.