Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [104]
Some time later: “Goddamn it!” cried a voice, Jehovah summoning fire and brimstone. It was Gabriel, lurching as if to stand up, making the boat pitch.
“Sit down!” we all growled.
He flopped heavily down again, roaring in a cracked voice: “God! God! What fucking God? God’s evil. That’s what it is. God’s evil and the devil’s won. That’s what it is!”
“Don’t talk about the devil!” begged Skip.
“Calm down,” said Dan.
“How? Calm down?” Gabriel laughed, a humourless bark. “Are you mad?”
“I may be,” Dan said. “Calm down anyway.”
“Quite simply,” said another disembodied voice, very steady, the captain probably, though it didn’t sound like him: “it’s possible all of us will die.”
A hand crept into mine.
“I don’t want to die!” Someone whining, I still don’t know who. Simon, I think, though again it sounded nothing like him and it was so long since he’d spoken that I’d almost forgotten him. Someone else started crying, a fierce, ragged sound.
There was a lurch. “Goddamn you, Skip,” Gabriel said, “this is all your fault.”
“I know, I know.” Skip’s voice, suddenly close by my ear, so close it made the small hairs there quiver, a pale whisper of a voice. “Sorry. Sorry.”
“We should chuck you over.” Dag’s voice, teeth chattering, hiccuping.
“That’s enough now,” Dan said.
“Chuck him over!” Gabriel with a grin in his voice.
“Chuck him over!” Simon joined in.
“Chuck him over! Chuck him over!” Tim now too, and I was about to join in when Dan’s stern voice cut through.
“Remember I have a pistol,” it said. “The first person to lay hands in anger on any one of us gets first bullet.”
Silence. Then Captain Proctor spoke. “I too have a pistol,” he said.
Silence.
“I too have a pistol,” he repeated thoughtfully, then: “Mr. Rymer, enlighten me please. Am I not still captain of this—this …”
“You are indeed.”
“If there’s any shooting to be done, I decide.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean …”
“You fools!” said Gabriel with a depth of scorn. “What does it matter?”
No one spoke for a few minutes.
The waves were small and even, singing like a lullaby, up and down, up and down, lullullullullulluluuu for ever and ever and …
“You think I’m a fool!” the captain gritted out. “I am not a fool!”
“No one thinks you’re a fool,” said Dan.
Skip screamed, a long, horrible, madman’s shriek that pierced my head, and the captain yelled: “Shut him up, for God’s sake!”
“Skip,” said Dan, “come here.”
Then all hell broke loose, terror skipping from one to another, leaping between us, settling and enveloping us all, a suffocating cloud. I heard a whimpering very close to my ear. Then it was all around and I was in it and of it and falling horribly through it, a weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
“Enough!” A pistol shot.
Silence.
The captain spoke. “We are not animals,” he wheezed. “Not one more sound or the next bullet finds more than empty air.”
A few moments of staggered breathing and snuffling and sighing faded away into nothing.
“Now,” the captain said, “settle down, everyone, and go to sleep. Mr. Rymer, keep that boy under control.”
“Come here to me, Skip,” said Dan softly, sounding very tired.
“Have him,” Gabriel said sulkily. “I can’t sleep for him.”
“Sleep?” said Tim. “You sleep?”
Then we were all laughing again.
Skip trod on me in the darkness.
“Fuck you,” I said.
“Sorry,” said Skip.
“You think I’m a fool,” the captain said tightly. “I am still in command of this enterprise. I must consider the welfare of us all.”
Skip flopped down somewhere. The boat quivered.
“For God’s sake, sleep,” said Dan.
The silent length of night with no moon or stars. The sound of Dag’s snoring. Tim’s hand loose in mine, and me thinking about Ma.
“Ma,” I said.
“Yes. Shh,” said Dan. “You’ll see your ma again.”
Death was close. Sitting next to me. It hurt, if the others were anything to go by. And if them, why not me? How do you get there? Death, I mean, wherever it was the wild thing dropped you: you, breath-stopped, amazed. Will I fall there or drift? When would be the moment of knowing? What sound? What sight?