John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

The moon shed light to walk by in the yard, but the inside of the barn was black as Chaos. He thought of calling Susan, but decided not to.

"I shall approach in silence, and clip her like a brigand in the dark!"

This was a thrilling fancy: he pricked up at every rustle in the barn, and the cramps of love like hatching chicks bid fair to burst their prisons. What's more, six stealthy paces in the dark were enough to stir his bladder past ignoring; he was obliged to relieve himself then and there before going farther.

"God aideth those that aid themselves," he reflected.

But unlike Onan, who hit no noisier target than the ground, the hapless Laureate chanced to strike a cat, a half-grown tom not three feet distant that had looked like a gray rock in the dark. And like the finger-flick of Descartes' God, which Burlingame once spoke of, this small shot in the dark set an entire universe in motion! The mouser woke with a hiss and flew with splayed claws at the nearest animal — fortunately not Ebenezer but one of Susan's shoats. The young pig squealed, and soon the barn was bleating with the cries of frightened animals. Ebenezer himself was terrified, at first by the animals, whose number and variety he had not suspected, and then lest the din, now amplified by barking dogs outside, arouse the household. When he jumped back, holding up his breeches in one hand, he happened upon a stick leaning against the wall — possibly Susan's staff. He snatched it up, at the same time crying "Susan! Susan!" and laid about him vigorously until the combatants ran off — the shoat into the cow stalls and the cat into a corner whence had come some sound of poultry. A moment later the respite ended: the barn was filled with quacks and squawks; ducks, geese, and chickens beat the air wildly in their effort to flee the cat, and Ebenezer suffered pecks about the head and legs as bird after bird encountered him. This new commotion was too much for the dogs, a pair of raucous spaniels: they bounded in from the yard in pursuit of what they took to be a fox or weasel preying on the poultry, and for all the Laureate thrashed around him with his stick, they ran him from the barn and treed him in a poplar near the closest tobacco-shed. There they held him at bay for some fifteen minutes before trotting off to sleep, their native lack of enthusiasm overcoming their brief ambition.

As yet the poet had seen no sign of Susan Warren, and he began to fear she had deceived him after all. He resolved to descend and try the barn once more, both to verify his suspicions and to take cover from the mosquitoes, which were raising welts all over his face and ankles; but as he was climbing down he heard a noise like a buzz or rattle in the grass. Was it only a common cricket, or was it one of those snakes Mr. Keech had described during supper? The notion of descent lost all its charm, and though he heard the sound no more, and the mosquitoes were no less hungry, he remained a good while longer in the tree, too frightened even to compose an indignant Hudibrastic.

He might, in fact, have still been there at sunup — for on the heels of Fear, like a tart behind her pimp, came the shame he knew would embrace him soon or late, and Shame brought her gaunt-eyed sister-whore Despair — but at length he heard some man at the back of the house say "No more, now, Susan; good night and get ye gone!" Then the house door closed, and a cloaked form crossed the distant yard and entered the barn.

"That scoundrel Mitchell had her in the parlor!" Ebenezer thought, and recalled the coarse familiarity with which the planter had saluted her. "She was accosted as she left and put to some lewd entertainment, and only now hath managed to escape!"

This conjecture, so far from filling him with pity, revived his ardor at once, as had the plight of the Cyprian women; quietly and cautiously he slid down from the poplar and stalked through the tall grass to the barn, expecting at any moment to feel the fangs of the viper in his heel. Arriving safely at the doorway, he entered without a sound and saw inside only the faintest of gleams from a shaded lantern.

"Hssst!" he whispered, and "Hssst!" came the reply. Ebenezer heard a labored respiration, unmistakably human, just down the wall from where he stood, and so resolved to call no more, but execute his original plan of surprise assault. Very carefully he crept toward his prey, whose location in the pigpen he fixed easily by her heavy breathing and the rustle of restless swine in her vicinity. Only when he judged himself virtually upon her did he croon "Susie, Susie, me doxy, me dove!" at the same time clutching amorously at her form.

Bare legs he felt, and hams, but —

"Heav'n upon earth, what's this?"

"What is't, indeed?" a man's voice cried, and after a short struggle the poet found himself pinned face down in the sour straw of the pen. His would-be victim sat upon his back and held his arms; sows, hogs, and shoats snuffled nervously together at the far end of the enclosure. "Ye thought me your doxy, your dove, now, did ye? What knave are ye, sir?"

"Prithee, let me but explain!" Ebenezer pleaded. "I am Captain Mitchell's guest!"

"Our guest! What way is this to return our hospitality? Ye drink our cider and eat our hominy and then ye think to swive my Portia!"

"Portia? Who is Portia?"

"The same my father calls Susie. I'll wager he put ye up to this!"

The Laureate's heart sank. "Your father! Then thou'rt Tim Mitchell?"

"The same. And which ungrateful wretch are you?"

"I am Ebenezer Cooke, sir, Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland — "

"Nay!" said Mitchell, clearly impressed, and to Ebenezer's great surprise he released his hold at once. "Sit up, sir, please, and forgive my rude behavior; 'twas but concern for my Portia's chastity."

"I–I quite forgive you," the poet said. He sat up hastily, wondering at the fellow's words. Tim Mitchell, to judge by his voice, was a man of Ebenezer's age at least; how could he speak of Susan's chastity? "I believe thou'rt having a jest at my expense, Mr. Mitchell, are you not?"

"Or you at mine," the other man sighed. "Ah well, ye've caught us fair, and Portia's life is in your hands."

"Her life! She's here, then, in this pen?"

"Of course, sir; over yonder with the rest. I beg ye not to speak a word to Father!"

"Marry!" the poet cried. "What madness is this, Mister Mitchell? Explain yourself, I beg you!"

The other man sighed. " 'Tis just as well I did, for if ye mean to ruin us, ye will, and if thou'rt a gentleman, perchance ye'll leave us in peace."

"Thou'rt in love with Susan?" Ebenezer asked incredulously.

"Aye and I am," Tim Mitchell replied, "and have been since the day I saw her. Her name is really Portia, Mister Cooke; 'tis Father calls her Susie, after a whore of a mistress he once had. He regards her as his property, sir, and treats her like a beast! Should he learn the truth of our love there would be no end to his wrath!"

Ebenezer's brain spun dizzily. "Dear Mister Mitchell — "

"The blackguard!" Timothy went on, his voice unsteady. "Till he hath got that new wench in his power, he comes out eveningly to poor sweet Portia, whose maidenhead he claimed when she was yet a shoat too young to fend him off."

Ebenezer could not but admire the metaphor of the shoat, and yet there were obvious discrepancies between the accounts of Susan's past. "I do declare," he protested, "this is not — "

"There is no limit to the man's poltroonery," Timothy hissed. "Albeit he is my father, sir, I loathe him like the Devil! Say naught of this, I beg ye, for in his wickedness, did he know aught of our love, he would give her to the lecherous boar in yonder pen, that e'er hath looked on her with lewd intent, and let him take his slavering will o' her."