Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [119]
In fact, they didn’t seem to mind the poison at all. Didn’t seem to have the slightest bellyache from their specially prepared destruction. Not even the children; I have to confess it was painful for me to see the little ones devour this tainted bait, their little mouths eager to experience the novelty of it all. I was witnessing an act of genocide, I was sure. I have no delusions about myself in this: I was no less morally responsible than those that sat by while European traders sold infected blankets to Indians, or the first guns were traded for slaves on the West African coast. I was relieved to see that, much like with children everywhere, the novelty of a new food was outweighed by the inevitable repulsion to novelty itself. Leaning in toward their fathers’ and mothers’ food-laden fingertips, all of the children I could see took only the smallest of bites before shaking their heads in the familiar refrain of the picky toddler. I confess, I didn’t see all of the children, and I don’t offer this report as an excuse. I was participating in something horrible, and my only defense is that I was motivated by my own fear, which of course is no defense at all.
At that moment, though, I was engulfed more in practical matters than in ethical quandaries. The food had to be served; although we had planned for fifty Tekelian monsters, there were at least a hundred in attendance, and we weren’t prepared to get the plates to each of the unfolded tables while they were still warm. This, however, turned out to be to our benefit: the beasts really liked the food cold. In fact, even when we managed to bring it to their tables quickly, the creatures let the warm plates sit there for a few minutes in the wind, refusing to touch them before the dinner became nearly as frigid as the air. We decided to play a zone defense with our serving duties to make up for the fact that there weren’t enough of us to fully meet the challenge. This strategy soon met a snag when it was discovered that Jeffree’s monster had been placed in my quadrant. Old Sausage Nose sat closest to the exit door with a table all to himself, an arrangement clearly referencing his importance. As soon as we got on the roof, I could see Jeffree staring at him with his one working eye. The beast saw him too. He saw what he thought was his and he demanded it. As the rest of the troops dug into their food, this monster just stared across at his injured chattel, one arm extended, pointing his long alabaster digit directly at Jeffree’s moving body. There could be no confusing the gesture, so I was left to ignore it. I had no intention of bringing Jeffree near Sausage Nose’s table; I could tell by the way Jeffree was looking that he was already imagining the finale in his personal movie, already imagining his climactic conquering of the big boss. As I struggled to figure out how to avoid the impending conflict, Carlton Damon Carter pushed by me with such force that I expected him to attempt to maul the molester of his man. Instead, Carlton Damon Carter immediately went to serve the food that sat before the creature, picking up a piece of the poisonous Hamburger Helper stroganoff delight in his bare brown hands and holding it out to the beast’s mouth with all the tenderness of a man feeding a baby goat in a petting zoo.
“Eat up, big boy. You eat as much as you deserve, honey,” he cooed, his free hand still holding the camera, which he’d somehow recovered before fleeing, to record the revenge for posterity.
And it was not just the Tekelians who were taken