John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

Burlingame sighed and turned grimly to the company. "Since it is your pleasure to noise these privy matters in a public house, young man, and boast so of my talents to these gentlemen, I must insist ye tell the whole unvarnished truth about this flower."

"And what is that?" the Laureate asked, but with some apprehension in his sneer. "You will never know her one tenth as well as I."

"Of that I have no doubt, Master Laureate; yet to hear ye speak of her, these gentlemen must think your flower as thorny as the brier rose, or difficult of access as the lofty edelweiss. Yet ten years and more ago, whilst still a bud, she came to me for plucking and bade me be the first to taste her nectar. These eyes of mine, that ye make much of: how often she hath unfolded all her petals for their delight! And with these hands and this mouth, to say no farther, many and many a time I have brought her to the brink of madness — aye, and made her swoon for joy! A little growth or mole she hath — ye know her so well, I need not mention where — which if ye press it such-a-way — "

Ebenezer had gone white; his features roiled and boiled about. "Stop!" he gasped.

"And her most modest countenance — ye must know even more than I what sweet perversions it conceals! That little language that she speaks without her mouth, and her endless tricks to conjure manliness — "

The company laughed and rolled their eyes at one another. Ebenezer clutched his throat, unable to speak, and buried his face in his arms upon the bar. Though he had stopped drinking, the alcohol still mounted to his head. His palms and forehead sweated, saliva poured into his mouth, and his stomach churned.

"I scarce need mention that most fetching game of all," Burlingame went on relentlessly, "the one she plays when other pleasures fail — have ye remarked it? I mean the game she calls Heavenly Twins, or Abel and Jumella, but I call Riding to Gomorrah — "

"Wretch!" shrieked Ebenezer, and endeavored to fling himself upon his former tutor; but he was held fast by the planters and counseled to keep his wrath in check. His vision swam: his equilibrium left him, and he fell into a fit of retching at the image of what he'd heard. As though from another room he heard Burlingame say, " 'Tis time to fill the pipes. Take him somewhere to sleep his liquor out, and mind ye treat him well, for he's a prize." And then, as two planters bore him from the room: "Sleep ye now, my Laureate; in all thy orifices be my sins remembered!"

By the time Ebenezer had quite slept off the effects of his rum, the sky over Maryland had begun to lighten. During the night — which happened to be the last in September — the Indian summer had given way to more characteristic autumn weather; indeed, the early morning air was positively cold, and it was the chattering of his teeth, and general shivering, that woke the Laureate.

"Dear God!" he cried, and sat up at once. He found himself in a sort of corncrib at one end of a stable, presumably behind the ordinary, his legs and trunk buried in the coarsegrained ears. One at a time his woes revealed themselves: he had lost Malden forever and had surely alienated Burlingame as well — whose shocking declarations, the poet now felt certain, had been invented for their retaliatory and sobering effect.

"I'faith, I had it coming!" he reflected. He was, moreover, in a wretched state of health: his head throbbed from the rum, the light hurt his eyes, and his stomach was still none too strong. The chill air, in addition, had turned his previous indisposition into a real ague: he sneezed and shivered and ran at the nose, and ached in every joint.

"Lovely treatment for their Laureate!" He resolved to chastise the proprietor of the inn, even sue him if he could find proper grounds, and it was not until he stirred to carry out this resolve that he realized the main cause of his chill: his coat, hat, and breeches were gone, and he lay clothed in hose and drawers only. He could think of nothing to do except appeal for help from the first person to bring a horse out to the stable; in the meantime he was obliged to dig a sort of well into the corncobs, lower himself into it, and pack the rough ears all about him to keep the breeze off.

"Out on't!" he swore after an hour had passed. "Where are the man's customers?"

He attempted to while away the minutes by composing couplets to flay all innkeepers, from that one who had put Joseph and Mary in the stable at Bethlehem to the one who allowed the Laureate of Maryland to sleep in a corncrib — but his heart was not in his work, and he gave it up when he found himself unable to summon a rhyme for diabolical. He had not eaten since noon of the previous day: as the sun rose, his stomach rumbled. His sneezing grew more severe, and he had nothing more delicate than a corncob on which to wipe his nose. At length, beginning to fear that he would perish of exposure before anyone came to rescue him, he raised a shout for assistance. Again and again he called, to no avail, until at last a large and blowzy woman of middle age, happening to drive her wagon into the yard, heard his cries, reined in her horse, and came over to the stable.

"Who's in there?" she demanded. "And what in thunder ails ye?" Her voice was loud and husky, and her proportions — more truly seen now she was standing — prodigious. She wore the ubiquitous Scotch cloth of the working Marylander; her face was red-brown and wrinkled, and her grey hair as tangled as an old brier-thicket. So far from showing alarm at Ebenezer's outcries, her eyes narrowed with what seemed to be anticipatory mirth, and her half-toothed mouth already smiled.

"Keep hence!" cried Ebenezer. "Pray come no nearer till I explain! I am Ebenezer Cooke, Poet and Laureate of this province."

"Ye do not tell me! Well, I am Mary Mungummory, that once was called the Traveling Whore o' Dorset, but I don't boast of't. Why is't ye linger in the corncobs, Master Poet? Are ye making verse or making water?"

"God forfend I'd choose such a sanctuary to piss in," the poet replied, "and 'twould want a cleverer wight than I to turn a corncob into art."

The woman chuckled. "Belike thou'rt playing unnatural games, then?"

"From what I've learnt of Marylanders, I'm not surprised that you should think so. Howbeit, 'tis only your assistance I crave."

"Well, now!" Mary laughed immensely and approached the corncrib.

"Nay, madam!" Ebenezer pleaded. "You've misconstrued me: I've not a farthing to buy aught of your services."

"De'il have your farthings," the big woman said. "I care naught for farthings till the sun goes down. 'Twill be enough for me to see what a poet looks like." She climbed up into the corncrib, rumbling with amusement.

"Stay hence!" Ebenezer raked desperately at additional ears of corn to cover his shame. " 'Tis but a Christian service I beg of you, madam." Briefly he explained his plight, and ended by imploring Mary to find him some clothing at once, before the ague carried him off.

The whole story vastly entertained her, and to the poet's joy she said, " 'Tis no chore at all, young man: I've a pair or two o' breeches in my wagon, I'm certain." She explained that her sobriquet was the pride of her younger years, when she had traveled by wagon from plantation to plantation to practice her trade. Now that she was old, she had turned to procuring for a living; she and her girls made a monthly circuit of every settlement and large plantation in the county, breaking their schedule only for such events as the semi-yearly sessions of the court.

From her wagon she fetched a pair of buckskin trousers, a shirt of the same material, and Indian moccasins, all of which she flung up to Ebenezer.