John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"As't please ye," Captain Mitchell grumbled, and gave some last instructions to Burlingame: "Look ye well on old Ben Spurdance's place, Timmy. 'Tis a den o' thieves and whores, and belike 'tis there she's flown again. She aims to join her sister puddletrotters now that Cambridge court is sitting."

"That I shall," smiled Burlingame.

"Take care ye don't dally by the way, and fetch Miss Susan hither within the week, for I've a word to say to her. I'll have an end to her drunkenness and leave-takings, by Heav'n! Every simpleton that comes through pays her two pounds for a squint at her backside and swallows her cock-and-bull story into the bargain, and 'tis I must bear the cost o' fetching her home again!"

As he spoke he glared at Ebenezer so accusingly that the poet turned crimson, to the merriment of the other guests, and offered further to bear the charge of Timothy's expedition. He was happy enough to leave the table when the lengthy breakfast was done, although he could not contemplate with pleasure the prospect of setting out for the Eastern Shore with Burlingame. Once on the road, alone with him, it would be necessary to come to some sort of terms with the problem put in abeyance by the urgency of their first encounter that morning: what their future relationship was to be. That it could remain what it had been thitherto, and the revelations of the night before go undiscussed, was unthinkable.

Yet when near noontime they set out on their journey — Ebenezer riding an ancient roan mare of Captain Mitchell's and Burlingame a frisky three-year-old gelding of his own — he could think of no gambit for initiating the discussion that he was courageous enough to use, and Burlingame showed no inclination to speak of anything less impersonal than the unseasonably warm day (which he said was called "Indian summer" by the colonials), the occasional planters or Indians whom they encountered on the road, and the purpose of their route.

"Calvert County is just across the Chesapeake from Dorset," he explained. "If we sailed due east from here we'd land very near Cooke's Point. But what we'll do is sail a bit northeastwards to Tom Smith's place in Talbot, just above Dorchester; he's the wight that hath the next piece of the Journal."

"Whate'er you think best," Ebenezer replied, and despite his wish to get matters out in the open, he found himself talking instead about Susan Warren, to whom, he declared, he was grateful for breaking her pledge to him, and whose flight to her father he pleaded with Burlingame not to intercept. Burlingame agreed not to search for the swine-girl at all, and changed the subject to something equally remote from what most occupied the poet's mind. Thus they rode for two or three hours into the afternoon, their horses gaited to a leisurely walk, and with every new idle exchange of remarks it became increasingly difficult for Ebenezer to broach the subject, until by the time they reached their most immediate destination — a boatlanding on the Chesapeake Bay side of Calvert County — he realized that to introduce the matter now would make him appear ridiculous, and with a sigh he vowed to have it out with his former tutor first thing next morning, if not at bedtime that very night.

Burlingame hired a pinnace to ferry them and their animals to Talbot, and they made the ten-mile crossing without incident. As they entered the wide mouth of the Choptank River, which divides the counties of Talbot and Dorchester, Burlingame pointed to a wooded neck of land nearly two miles off to starboard and said, "If I not be far wide of the mark, friend, that point o'er yonder is your own Cooke's Point, and Malden stands somewhere among those trees."

"Dear Heav'n!" cried Ebenezer. "You didn't say we would pass so near! Pray land me there now and join me when your work is done!"

" 'Twould be twice imprudent," Henry replied. "For one thing, thou'rt not yet accustomed to dealing with provincial types, as I am; for another, 'twere unseemly that their Lord and Laureate should arrive alone and unescorted, don't you think?"

"Then you must come with me, Henry," Ebenezer pleaded, and the certain surliness in his voice, which throughout the day had been the only token of his tribulation, finally disappeared. "You can get the Journal later, can you not?"

But Burlingame shook his head. "That were no less imprudent, Eben. There are two pieces of the Journal yet to find: the one with Tom Smith in Talbot, the other with a William Smith in Dorset. Tom Smith I know by sight, and where he lives; we can get his part tomorrow and be off to Cambridge. But this William Smith of Dorset is an entire stranger to me: in the time 'twill take to find him, Coode could kill and rob the twain. Besides, in Oxford, where we'll land, there is a barber that shall trim your hair or shave you for a periwig, at my expense."

To such reason and graciousness Ebenezer could offer no objection, though his heart sank as they dropped Cooke's Point astern and turned north up the smaller Tred Avon River to a village called variously Oxford, Thread Haven, and Williamstadt. There they disembarked and paid calls first on the promised barber — whom Ebenezer on a comradely impulse directed to trim his natural hair in the manner of the Province rather than shave it for a periwig — and then to an inn near the wharf, where they dined on cold roast mallard and beer, also at Burlingame's expense. Assuming that they would sleep there as well, the Laureate vowed to review the whole question of Henry's relations with Anna as soon as they retired for the night, in order to determine once and for all how he should feel about it; but Henry himself frustrated this resolve by declaring, after supper, that sufficient daylight remained for them to reach the house of Thomas Smith, and proposing that they lose no time in laying hands upon his portion of the Journal.

"For I swear," he said, wiping his mouth upon his coat sleeve, "so damning is this evidence for Coode, he'll stop at naught to get it, nor scoff at any hint of its location. Let's begone." He rose from the table and started for the horses; not until he was halfway to the door did he look back to see that Ebenezer, instead of following after, still sat before his empty plate, wincing and sighing and ticking his tongue.

"Ah, then," he said, corning back, "thou'rt distraught. Is't that you came so near your estate and did not reach it?"

Ebenezer shook his head in a manner not clearly either affirmative or negative. "That is but a part of't, Henry; you go at such a pace, I have no time to think things through as they deserve! I cannot collect my wits e'en to think of all the questions I would ask, much less explore your answers. How can I know what I must do and where I stand?"

Burlingame laid his arm across the poet's shoulders and smiled. "What is't you describe, my friend, if not man's lot? He is by mindless lust engendered and by mindless wrench expelled, from the Eden of the womb to the motley, mindless world. He is Chance's fool, the toy of aimless Nature — a mayfly flitting down the winds of Chaos!"

"You mistake my meaning," Ebenezer said, lowering his eyes.

Burlingame was undaunted: his eyes glittered. "Not by much, methinks. Once long ago we sat like this, at an inn near Magdalene College — do you remember? And I said, 'Here we sit upon a blind rock hurtling through a vacuum, racing to the grave.' 'Tis our fate to search, Eben, and do we seek our soul, what we find is a piece of that same black Cosmos whence we sprang and through which we fall: the infinite wind of space. ."

In fact a night wind had sprung up and was buffeting the inn. Ebenezer shivered and clutched the edge of the table. "But there is so much unanswered and unresolved! It dizzies me!"

"Marry!" laughed Henry. "If you saw it clear enough 'twould not dizzy you: 'twould drive you mad! This inn here seems a little isle in a sea of madness, doth it not? Blind Nature howls without, but here 'tis calm — how dare we leave? Yet lookee round you at these men that dine and play at cards, as if the sky were their mother's womb! They remind me of the chickens I once saw fed to a giant snake in Africa: when the snake struck one of the others squawked and fluttered, but a moment after they were scratching about for corn, or standing on his very back to preen their feathers! How is't these men don't run a-gibbering down the streets, if not that their minds are lulled to sleep?" He pressed the poet's arm. "You know as well as I that human work can be magnificent; but in the face of what's out yonder" — he gestured skywards — " 'tis the industry of Bedlam! Which sees the state of things more clearly: the cock that preens on the python's back, or the lunatic that trembles in his cell?"