Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [96]
We all burst out laughing. The others in the captain’s boat must have thought we were having a rare old time. But in the middle of us all laughing came the sudden throwing backwards of Mr. Rainey against the gunwale, as if a giant, invisible hand slapped him there. Then he went mad, banging and flapping about horribly with his head twisting and thrashing enough to break his neck, and his mouth open and his tongue rushing out and in, and his eyes squelched shut, and his feet kicking and his arms flailing. He was so broken by it, it made me sick. I couldn’t stand to see him like that, and yet he was there in front of me cracking himself to death, and with every smack of his head against the boards, I closed my eyes like you do at hammer cracks.
Dan and Tim went to him, but could get no hold.
His eyes rolled up and up and up, blue-white and bulging. Then the whites stopped flickering and he fell still and was dead.
never saw anyone die till I saw Billy Stock die. Animals, many. Never a person, never a person I knew, a Billy Stock or a Mr. Rainey.
The boats came together. We sewed Mr. Rainey up in his clothes, me and Gabriel and Skip, not a word between us. The last glimpse of his face: open lipped, frowning, the shadow of the shroud half upon it. Blue skin. Gabriel closed the cloth over it and sewed it up with his bone needle. The captain said the prayer. Dan and Tim slipped him over the side.
“Oh Lord, we are eleven souls afloat …”
Me and Tim and Dan and Skip and Gabe on our boat. Six over there: the Captain, John Copper, Wilson Pride, Dag, Simon, Yan.
Dan said to us, “You know, he was at the seawater all the time. On the quiet. That’s what did for him. Don’t you do that, boys. We’ll raise a good glass in Valparaiso.”
We were at our daily ration. A cup of water. A lump of hardtack. I tried to spin it out. I wasn’t hungry like I was at the beginning, this was different. The cramps had gone, but something remained like a ghost, like I suppose it feels when they’ve cut your leg off but you still feel it there stuck to you, itching and twitching and aching and doing all the other things a limb does. I scraped tiny bits off my hard biscuit and sucked them from my fingers. I was very good. Very sensible, I thought, not like Skip, who got through his in about five minutes and then, like a dog, watched me eat mine. Tim was quick with his too. He’d follow it up with an hour or two’s nibbling and sucking peacefully and steadily on the leather of his oar.
“What’s it like?” I said. “That?”
“Nice.”
It made the time pass a little softer. My eyes roamed, looking for food. Wood? How about that? Wood was all around. Wood. I’ll mention it to Dan, I thought. It’s possible. Leather now, we’re not so badly off. Still a few boots around, Proctor’s and Dan’s, and belts. And now the sea-soaked stuff was gone and it was nice dry tack, and there was still plenty of water. For now. What else? More barnacles. Must go under and look. But I was scared of going over. I felt weak, not sure I could get back in. Could be anything under there. I closed my eyes and saw scallops fat as puffballs, white and orange, already out of their shells, clinging all over the bottom of the boat, blowing there like flowers under the sea, sweet as the sticky Chinese fruit we ate in … where was it? Meat. The stew my ma cooked out of fat mutton and onions and barley, the grease that floated on top of the pan, quivering as it simmered. Fried fish, steaming layers of eyeball-white flesh. Mashed turnip with the butter melting in it. Bacon frying, singing in the pan, bacon and a fried egg, round orange dome, jelly, the rashers just beginning to burn. Barley soup, goose with gravy, liver and onions, wine, beer, gin, pig’s feet, tripe, toast and dripping. Mrs. Linver’s milk pudding with a rich brown crust on top. Cream on my tongue. Raspberries, ruby, dusted, crushing their seeds between my teeth. Juices spurting. There in the street