John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"He'd mentioned along the way that he'd shot a young buck the night before and was waiting till Monday, like a proper Christian, to butcher it, but when we rode around the cabin I spied a salvage woman up to her elbows in the bloody carcass, cleaving off steaks and rump-roasts. She was dressed in dirty deerskin like the old squaws wear; her hair was coarse and tangled, and her brown skin greasy as a bacon-flitch. Her back was turned to us as we rode in, and she paid us no heed at all. 'Twas on my mind to twit Billy for her industry — tell him 'twas a merry bit o' Jesuitry, don't ye know, setting heathens to break the Sabbath for him — but ere ever I got the words out he addressed her in the salvage tongue, and I saw when she faced round 'twas no Indian woman at all. I could only gather, she was the famous Church Creek Virgin!"

Ebenezer and McEvoy registered their astonishment.

"I'faith, sirs," Russecks proceeded, "it doth give a civil man pause when first he lays eyes upon a salvage, for't carries him back to view the low origin of his history: yet by how much rarer is the spectacle of one of his kind fallen back to the salvage condition, by so much more confounding is't to behold, for it must drive home to him how strait and treacherous is the climb to politeness and refinement — so much so, that one breath of inattention, as't were, may send the climber a-plummet to his former state. And in the civillest among us, don't ye know — in Mister Cooke the poet there, or who ye will — this precious cultivation — 'sheart, sirs, on sight of one like Billy Rumbly's wife. .!" He paused and started over. "What I mean, sirs, 'tis like the cultivation of our fields, so't seems to me: 'tis all order and purpose — and wondrous fruits doth it bring forth! — yet 'tis but a scratch, is't not, on the face of unplumbable deeps? Two turns o' the spade cuts through't to the untouched earth, and under that lies a thousand miles o' changeless rock, and deeper yet lie the raging fires at the core o' the world!

"The sensible man, I say, is bound to reflect on these things when he sees one of his own gone salvage like the Church Creek Virgin. She was dressed in Indian garb, as I said before, and pig-dirty from head to foot. She'd browned her skin with dye, so't appeared, and basted it with bear-fat, which with the dirt and deer-blood gave her a splendid salvage stink, e'en in the cold out-o'-doors. Never a glance did she cast to me, but stared always at Billy like a good retriever, and at his command she gave o'er hacking the buck and plodded off with two steaks to broil for dinner."

The interior of the cabin, Russecks went on to say, he had found as clean as the housekeeper was not, who in the heat from the fireplace grew redolent as a tan yard; throughout the afternoon, when dinner was done, she had sat stolidly on the hearthrug, Indian fashion, grinding meal in an earthenware mortar, and had spoken only in grunts and monosyllables when Billy addressed her. Yet though her manner and condition were slavelike, at no time had the trapper observed anything suggestive of coercion or intimidation.

"In sum," he said, "she was an English lass no longer, but a simple salvage squaw . 'Tis my guess he sought her out in his bear-grease and magical loin-pouch and did such deeds o' salvage love and ravishment that she gave o'er the reins of her mind for good and all."

"Thou'rt off the mark," Mary said flatly. " 'Tis that he made such a conquest with his amorous lore, the girl renounced her Englishness on the spot for ever and aye. I know 'tis thus."

"Ah, but I loathe the monster nonetheless!" Ebenezer said. "E'en granting our innocence was given us to lose, still and all — any, rather therefore - its whole meaning is in the terms of its surrender, is't not? To have it wrested will-ye, nill-ye, ravished away — " He tried to envision the struggle: he fancied himself in the position of Miss Bromly, forced upon her back among the cold briars of the forest; the knife was at his neck, his coats were flung high, the wind bit his thighs and private parts; and over him, naked and greased, hung a swart, ferocious savage with the face and herpetonic eyes of Henry Burlingame. "God damn him for't! How the wretch must gloat in his victory!"

"How's that?" Russecks showed some surprise. "Gloat, ye say? Ah, well, now, he didn't gloat, ye know. Nay, friend, ye forget Billy Rumbly hath climbed a far greater distance than the lass hath sunk; aye, e'en higher by far than the station she left, I'll wager! Such a civil, proper gentleman as he could ne'er take pleasure in such a victory; yet 'twas the conquest, as I see't, that raised him up. The fact is, sirs, his wife is a constant shame to him: he entreats her to clean herself and dress like an English lady; he yearns to join the Church and have a Christian wedding; naught would please him more than to set sail tonight for Rome, or an English university. But she will none of't; she wallows in her filth and salvage ways, and poor Billy is too much the man of honor now either to desert her or to force her against her will!"

Mary Mungummory shook her head. "How well I know her heart and his as well! I wonder again what I wonder nightly as I watch the circus in my wagon: is man a salvage at heart, skinned o'er with Manners? Or is salvagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?"

For Ebenezer, at least, absorbed in recollection of certain violences in his past, the question was by no means without pertinence and interest; neither he nor the other men, however, ventured a response.

Soon after Harvey Russecks had concluded his story the company retired for the night on corn-husk mattresses provided by the host, which, with a plentiful supply of blankets from Mary's wagon, afforded Ebenezer and McEvoy the most comfortable night's lodging they had enjoyed for some time. The poet, however, was kept sleepless for hours by thoughts of Miss Bromly, his sister, the gravity of his mission, and the story he had just heard. Next morning as they breakfasted on platters of fried eggs and muskrat — a dish they found more pleasing to the tongue than to the eye — he declared, "I had cause enough before to find this Cohunkowprets, or Billy Rumbly, for he may be the means of sparing my conscience the burthen of two English lives; but now I've heard what state Miss Bromly hath fallen to, purely out of loyalty to my sister, 'tis more urgent than ever I seek the fellow out and try to save her. One ruined life the more on my account, and I'll go mad with responsibility!"

"Nay, friend," McEvoy urged, "I respect your sentiments, Heav'n knows, but think better of't! Thou'rt bound to save our hostages from Chicamec at any cost to yourself, so ye declared, and ye've shamed me into the same tomfoolish honor: d'ye think this Rumbly fellow's likely to oblige us if he sees thou'rt after wooing his wife away? And if he turns his back on us — i'faith! — 'twill not be two, but two hundred thousand lives ye may answer for; with Dick Parker and that other wight to general 'em, not all the militia in America can put down the slaves and Indians!"

"I tremble to think of't," said Mary Mungummory from her station at the cook-fire. "Don't forget, Mr. Cooke, what-e'er foul play brought the girl to her present pass, 'tis of her own will she stays there." Suddenly she gave an irritated sigh and called on an imaginary tribunal to witness the poet's wrongheadedness. "Marry, sirs, the world's about to explode, and he concerns himself with one poor slut's misfortunes!"

Ebenezer smiled. "Who's to say which end of the glass is the right to look through? One night when Burlingame and I were watching the stars from St. Giles in the Fields, I remarked that men's problems, like earth's mountains, amounted to naught from the aspect of eternity and the boundless heavens and Henry answered, 'Quite so, Eben: but down here where we live they are mountainous enough, and no mistake!' In any case, I mean to do what I can for Miss Bromly. I've no mind to prosecute Billy Rumbly for rape — 'twere a vain ambition in a Maryland court! — and he'll not object to my solicitude, if I have his case aright from Mr. Russecks."