Lawrence Block - Me Tanner, You Jane

“What do you suppose it is?”

“Oh, all different things,” I said. I had managed to identify some of the ingredients as they found their way into the pot. “They evidently massacred the mission livestock along with the human beings. A couple of hens went into the pot, and what must have been a goat or a sheep, and I think a hog. Plus a variety of fruits and vegetables. Some roots that looked like parsnips, although I suppose they could have been almost anything.”

“Almost anything,” she echoed.

“We’re both starving, all right. That food is going to taste damned good, Plum.”

“Damned good.”

“Nothing to eat since I can’t remember when. Except for the eggs, and you remember what a failure they were. Pretty horrible, huh?”

“Pretty horrible.”

“But from the smell, this stew or whatever you want to call it, it should be great. You must be hungry as a bear, huh? You didn’t even keep the eggs down, so you must be just about ready to faint from hunger. I’ll tell you, when they bring that stew around, it’s going to taste like a banquet.”

“Like a banquet.”

I looked at her. “Why do you keep repeating everything I say?”

“Because I am trying to believe you, Evan, almost as hard as you are trying to convince me. But it is not working out properly.”

“Why not?”

“Because we both know what is in that stew.”

“Pork and lamb and chicken, and what’s so bad about that? Nothing wrong with pork and lamb and chicken, is there? Oh, maybe it wasn’t lamb, maybe it was goat, and maybe you’ve never eaten goat, but it’s as good as lamb if not better. They call it chevon, which is a handy word if the thought of eating goat bothers you. What the hell, different people eat different things all over the world.” I was talking rapidly now, and my voice hadn’t been this high since it changed a couple of decades ago. “The Chinese eat dogs, did you know that? Young puppies are considered a great delicacy there. They also eat monkeys. Sounds terrible, but de gustibus and all that. Goat, now-”

“Evan, you know I am not talking about goat.”

“Er.”

“I am sure there are all the things you said in that stew, but I am sure there are also parts of human beings.”

“Uh.”

“The parts that had been removed.”

“Umm.”

“So do not talk of goats.”

“ Plum, we have to eat.” She made a face. “I know, I know, but we have to eat. We can’t let ourselves starve to death.” She went on making a face. “Well, look at it another way. I mean, how do you know you won’t like it? Remember the fuss you made about the dead antelope? Couldn’t stand the idea of eating it, you said. It was dead meat, meat just lying there on the ground, you said. Unrefrigerated, probably teeming with bacteria, you said. But once you tasted it-”

“Evan, please stop it.”

“You can’t starve yourself.”

“Human beings fast for a month or more without harming themselves. They gain religious insight and learn important truths.”

“The most important truth they learn is that eating is good for you.”

“That is not true, Evan.” She tossed her head. “I am not eating any of that.”

“You could just pick out bits of vegetable-”

“I am not eating. I am not hungry. I am tired, Evan, and I think I will lie down and go to sleep before it is discovered that I am neither black nor a man.” Her eyes welled with tears. “You were right.”

“About what?”

“When you told me I should stay in Griggstown.” All at once she threw her arms around my neck and sobbed.

“Oh, I’m afraid,” she said. “I am truly afraid.”

When she was asleep I slipped out of the hut and joined the crowd. The feast was getting into gear now, with the stew almost ready for serving. The young bloods were starting to tank up on a home-brewed malty liquor, and when someone passed me a gourd of it I didn’t pass it back. It smelled of moldy bread and spoiled fruit, but the taste wasn’t bad and the stuff had a reasonable kick to it. It couldn’t compare to the grain alcohol of the night before, which was probably just as well. I refilled my gourd a few times and mingled with my fellow soldiers, scratching and picking my nose and grunting amiably at them. I thought I looked like a short-haired white man who had stained his skin with roots and berries, but if they thought as much they were good enough to keep it to themselves. They didn’t even seem to notice my ignorance of their language. Every once in a while I would say “Banana Kropotkin Pulaski,” a phrase I kept hearing others use, and I guess it was always appropriate, because no one took a swing at me.

Of course the fact that they were all stoned out of their gourds may have helped a little.

Somewhere along the way I set the gourd aside and accepted a plate heaped high with stew. I had been drinking not only because I wanted to but also with the thought in mind that the stew would be easier to take after a couple of belts, and now I tried it, and it was great. I guess there was human flesh in it. When all is said and done, I don’t think there’s any way to avoid that conclusion. I’ve tried rationalizing my way out of it often enough, God knows, but it won’t hold up. There was human flesh in that fine kettle of flesh, and I ate a heaping plateful of crud served from that kettle, ate it without picking it over, ate it unselectively and voraciously, and the argument that I might well have actually consumed nothing more unorthodox than pork and chicken and lamb (or chevon) is pure sophistry.

They were never going to believe this in Paramus.

Once I had finished with my food I let myself withdraw from the party. The festive mood had not quite caught hold of me, and I was afraid that another gourd of punch would make me lose my cool. I went back to my hut to check on Plum. She was still sleeping, and from the tenor of her breathing she was sleeping well, untroubled by nightmares. I wished her well and stretched out beside her for a few moments of rest. I went through the full cycle of relaxation exercises, all of which were easier on a full stomach and with a modicum of alcohol in my system. Certain muscle groups were stubborn – the eyelids, the solar plexus area, the calf of my left leg, each of them showing a persistent propensity for tightening up of their own accord. But I managed to unwind fairly well, and when I packed it in after a half hour or so and yawned and stretched and yawned again and sat up, I was better rested than I had been in a couple of days.

Outside, the party was just getting into top form. The bloody minded cannibals were dancing up a storm. They had discarded their clothing, and their red genitals flashed in the firelight. There seemed to be a limitless supply of the malt liquor, and it seemed to have a far greater effect upon them than it had on me. Every once in a while one of them would go rigid and fall over as if he had been clubbed. His fellows would leave him where he lay, and he would just stay there without moving anything.

It occurred to me, and not for the first time, that this would have been an ideal time for the three of us to get the hell out of there. I had been thinking this ever since they trotted out the booze, and the more the red crotch set drank, the more sense the idea made to me. But Bowman was still in Sheena’s hut, and there were two sober guards in front of that hut, and Plum was asleep, and we hadn’t made plans, and it looked as though we would have to put it off for a day or two. Not for too long, though, because judging from the familiarity my cannibal friends were displaying out there, feasts were not that unusual a part of army life. It looked as though they did this sort of thing rather often.