Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

“Why not what?”

“We can’t stay here. We can’t go forward, you say. But why can’t we go back? You’ll think me crazy, though, if I even mention it. I think I’m crazy myself.” He straightened up, took a deep breath, and then reached over and took Margaret’s hand. “I can’t explain what’s happening inside my head. It’s full of bees. I can’t think straight.”

“Go on, Pigeon. Try to say.” She wrapped her fingers in his.

“My mother’s calling me,” he said. “That’s what I’ve thought about. Laying that fire. Keeping this little cabin in good heart. Waiting to hear you pulling back the door so we could eat. Everything I’ve done for you today, I used to do for her. But I’ll not abandon you and Jackie like I turned my back on Ma. So long as I draw breath, I’ll never forget her staying in the house so she wouldn’t have to wave us goodbye. I shouldn’t have left her there. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve had more strength. It’s right, what you say. I have dreamed of getting on the sailboat and making a new life for myself. But ever since Jackson died or disappeared, I’ve had two taller dreams. I’ve dreamed of finding him again. I’ve dreamed of walking back onto our land, poor though it is, and taking care of Ma. Those are my biggest dreams. They’re bigger dreams than getting on a ship, I’ll tell you that.”

That night, well fed and warm for once, a little bilious, smoky-eyed, but somehow calm, they thought through Jackson’s madcap dream more carefully. Good sense demanded that they move away, out of the orbit of the rustlers, far from Captain Chief (and far from Melody Bose). Franklin’s life might depend on it (and so might Jackie’s). Good sense demanded that they at least should check out other anchorages farther down the coast. They’d traveled such a distance already. What difference could a few more days make? Good sense demanded that they keep away from those badlands they’d already escaped from, the lawless highway and the debris fields, the junkle and the plains of scrap, the deadly lanes of Ferrytown, the treacherous mountain paths unsuited to anything but goats, the acid earth of Franklin’s family farm, the taints and perils of America. But there was no excitement in good sense, and no romance. Sometimes it was wiser to be unwise. Only the crazy make it to the coast, and only the crazy make it back again. That was the wisdom of the road: you had to be crazy enough to take the risks, because the risks were unavoidable. So they came to talking hungrily of heading west, of being less than sensible, of turning their backs against the sunrise and the ocean, of being homeward bound.

But during the night, when Margaret, woken by a wet-legged Jackie, was cleaning up and drying the girl by candlelight, she felt less sure. All she could imagine was Franklin lost again, punished for his loyalty to her. Franklin being led away by Captain Chief. Franklin being set upon by bandits. Franklin being taken as a slave. Whatever happened, she decided, they would not make the same mistake as on the journey eastward, by following the highway. They’d stay on the back ways, living off the countryside, not begging from the few remaining homesteaders unless they had no other choice. Perhaps it would be best to travel at night. That would be possible if the skies were clear, especially as they still had one horse to help with Jackie and their few possessions. At least by night her tall man would be almost invisible and not vulnerable to any gang master who wanted some free labor. Yes, that would be their biggest problem, making Franklin almost invisible. She dreamed of it. She dreamed of Franklin being what he couldn’t be, short and unexceptional.

Margaret woke earlier than Jackie and Franklin, as usual, and rather than disturbing them just lay on her back watching the inside of the cabin take shape and listening a little nervously to the ocean, the wind, the sunup birds, the breathing at her side. She stretched her legs and flexed her muscles, feeling well, if just a little stiff. She cleaned her teeth with her nails and wiped her eyes clear of sleep. She pushed her hands through her hair and wondered if it would be possible, now that they had fire, to heat a little water. She hadn’t washed or even combed her lengthening hair for several days. She was ashamed of it. What must she look like to her faithful Franklin?

Then she had it. An idea.

The best protection for their journey west. The answer to the biggest problem that they faced. Now nobody would bother them. Franklin would be safe, for all his size and strength.

Margaret rolled out from under their saddle blanket and found the toolbox. There was hardly enough light yet to see each item clearly, but she could feel them. The gutting knife, still sticky from the horse’s blood. The implements they could not recognize. The mallet and the skillet. Some loops of string. She felt what she was hunting for, caught in the corner of the box. The fillet blade. She pulled it out by its bone handle. The metal cutting edge was sharp. After the attentions of a decent whetstone or a leather strop — and she was certain she could find something suitable — the edge of this blade would soon be dangerous. She’d always been the one at home in Ferrytown to sharpen tools, so she was confident. Yes, this would do. As soon as Franklin was awake and she had warmed some water, she’d shave her man, from head to toe. She’d make him look truly dangerous for once. He would become an outcast with the flux.

It was a strange experience, painstaking and embarrassing. Margaret’s hands were shaking at first, possibly because she had gripped the fillet blade so tightly and for so long when she was stropping it on one of the horse leathers, but also because Franklin was lying on their bed with his hands behind his head, like a lover. Satisfied. He had started out standing, and she had kneeled at his feet, first softening the hairs on his legs with water and then shaving them with upward movements of the blade, against the nap. But almost at once she nicked him. Just two tiny cuts. The blood spread alarmingly on his damp skin and her hands began to shake even more. So she started again, with better light. “Lie on your back,” she said. “Then I can reach you more easily.”

Margaret shaved both lower legs first, holding on to Franklin’s feet with one hand and cutting with the other. His hair was black but wispy there, on his calves and ankles, and only became more unruly and patternless toward his thighs. She did not shave far above his knees, just the full span of her fingers and no further. These lower parts of his long legs seemed common property and safe. Out of harm’s way. A man could show his legs this high to strangers and seem openhearted rather than immodest. But any higher and the intimacy would be too great for strangers.

Margaret kept her movements prim and did not speak. She wanted to appear dispassionate and concentrated on her task. There was, though, ardor in her heart. Just touching him in all his public places was such an unexpected pleasure. The hollows and the mounds, the muscles and the sinews, the rough male skin. Her fingers followed the blade.

Her thoroughness would have to recognize its limits, though. Franklin let her shave his back and chest and every last part of his arms, from the wiry hairs on the back of his knuckles to the tangled, wet, and gingery hairs in his armpits. But he became less comfortable when Margaret started on the mass of hairs around his nipples. He had to hold her leg to steady himself. His breathing became restless. His eyeballs rolled. His eyelids dropped. “Are you okay?” she asked. He nodded, couldn’t speak. He cried out only once and let out a deep sigh, when Margaret was tugging up the hairs below his belly button to cut them as short as she could. She thought she’d cut him, though there was no blood so far as she could see. But she could soon tell what was troubling him. Indeed, it now was just a finger span away from her cutting hand. Franklin was excited by her touch. That was something new — alarming and interesting. So her impulses were both to stare and to look away. “Margaret,” he said. And then a little later, “Margaret,” again. And then, “Mags, Mags.”