T. Boyle - Water Music

The rumor spreads like a brushfire fanned by harmattan winds. By 9:00 P.M. the entire garrison — all three hundred seventy-two men (or rather, three sixty-eight, four having expired during the interval) — is massed outside the Major’s quarters, each and every one — sick, debilitated, and walking dead alike — begging, wheedling, imploring, beseeching, adjuring and entreating to be taken on the mission. A tumult erupts when the Major, in full dress uniform and pressing a corsage of orchids and baby’s breath to his bosom, steps out onto the veranda, the saintly and flaxenhaired newcomer at his side.

“Men!” he shouts above the crowd. “Stalwart fellows of the Royal African Corps: hear me out!”

The roar gradually subsides to the level of isolated cursing and frothing, then to a low vicious snarling as of a pack of dogs disemboweling one another, and then finally to disgruntled muttering and a sad species of terminal wheezing.

“As you have all no doubt heard,” the Major cries, “this distinguished gentleman at my right, Captain Mungo Park—“ (here he is interrupted by a boozy voice calling for three cheers for Mungo Park and by the crazed yabbering of “ ‘Ear, ‘ear” that succeeds it). The Major takes advantage of the interval to lift Mungo’s arm aloft in the victory salute before continuing. “Mungo Park has come among us with a mission — a mission as noble and challenging as the momentous campaigns of Caesar, Alexander and Horatio Nelson—”

“Fuck noble,” shouts a man in the front of the crowd.

“Fuck speeches,” shouts another. “Take me! Take me!”

Almost instantly the crowd picks up the refrain, sniveling and slobbering, flinging up their hands like schoolchildren: “Me, me, ooh, take me!” From here on it is chaos. The sick throw away their crutches and dance like coryphees, the enfeebled strain to lift logs and boulders, the fevered recite recipes and the lyrics of popular songs to demonstrate their perspicuity. Fights break out. Imprecations rake the sky, stones and clods of earth begin to rain down over the crowd like a judgment from above. Suddenly a torch flares out against the darkness — and then another, and another. The mob presses in on the Major’s flimsy bamboo balustrade, chanting “me, me, me, me,” crazed and dangerous, disaster in the air. . and then the explorer clears his throat.

Intense and immediate, a silence falls over them. The sound of shushing is universal, like the wash of distant seas. Mungo is stirred by the spectacle, by the energy, the need, the almost worshipful clamor he’s aroused and silenced in the space of a few short moments. He steps forward with the confidence of a born orator. “Give me some men!” he rumbles, caught up in it, emotive taps open wide, every last histrionic fiber swelling him to heroic proportions, “Men who are stout-hearted men, stout-hearted men to the end!”

♦ NED THE OBSCURE ♦

The sun scorches the sky as if it were newly created, as if it were flexing its muscle, hammering out the first link in a chain of megatonic nuclear events, flaring up with all the confidence of youth and all the promise of eternal combustion. Which is to say it is hot. Damnably hot. And as quiet as the surface of some uninhabitable and forbidden planet. No bird stutters from a dusty bush, no insect hums, whines or buzzes, no lizard rasps the back of its neck with a lazy hindleg. There isn’t even a breeze to lift the vegetation and drop it back down again.

Slowly, oh so slowly, a human presence begins to obtrude on this scene of utter desolation — from over the hump of a slight incline. Gang No. 1 can be seen making its gradual way past the blinding facades of the fort’s buildings and across a field strewn with igneous rubble. The members of the burial detail, some thirty in all, are staggering under the weight of picks and shovels and the four freshly hewn coffins balanced on their shoulders. Half an hour and fourteen faintings later, they have managed to traverse the hundred yards or so of broken ground that gives onto their destination: a sandy knoll overlooking the sea and randomly disfigured with grave markers. As they set their burdens down, a number of the men can be heard to complain about the imposition of having to dig graves in the heat of day. The usual practice is to let the deceased stink a day or two — or at least until nightfall. But this morning the Major has ordered the previous day’s casualties removed for immediate burial, no doubt as a point of etiquette with regard to the explorer’s presence.

“All right, men,” barks Lieutenant Martyn, “five minutes. And then I’ll expect you up on your feet and attacking this flinty earth like it was the hide of the judge that sentenced you.” Martyn is a nineteen-year-old enthusiast. His uniform is impeccable, his posture rigid. He loves the army.

In response to his command the twenty-nine underlings fling themselves down like so many wet rags, gasping and moaning, snatching for waterbags and rum bottles. They are a sorry lot, these men, bearded and sunburned, their uniforms a disgrace, soiled rags wrapped round their heads and feet and parasite-riddled legs. They are untutored and unskilled, drunks and brawlers, second-story men and murderers, incorrigible to the core. But then, how necessary is a good attitude to the digging of a grave? How much skill or enthusiasm does it really take?. . Still, as in any large aggregation of men, there are those particularly suited to specific tasks, those who over the years have developed special skills and inside knowledge. So too at Goree. Among those assigned to the burial detail are two ex-professionals schooled in the churchyards of Islington and Cheapside: Billy Boyles and Ned Rise.

“Ah Neddy, it’s a sorrowful hot day, init? And wot a bitch to have to be out here bleedin’ from the pores just because some fancy Lunnon monkey is come round to tea with the Major, eh?” Boyles is peering slantwise at his friend from beneath the shaggy brim of a Panama hat. To all outward appearances he isn’t appreciably different from the man who bamboozled Osprey, drank Nahum Fribble’s beer and lived at the bottom of Squire Trelawney’s well. Neither dysentery nor ague has touched him, so inured is he to filth and deprivation, so hardened against the assault of microbes by a lifetime of wallowing in the shit, scum and slime of London’s foulest and most putrid holes. Suddenly, the shadow of an inspiration lifts his lower lip and depresses his nose. “Hey: you think he’d take us along wiff him?”

Ned’s eyes are bloodshot. He has lost weight and is feeling lightheaded. For the past two nights he has been unable to sleep, racked with the chills and fevers of dysentery. “You kidding?” he growls. “He’ll be wanting your spit-and-shine crew, the ones that can stand up straight and toddle off to sleep like babes. Shit. What would he want with a couple of walking corpses like us?”

Boyles’ features rearrange themselves into a slow, stubborn pout. “I’m as good a man as any here,” he says. And then immediately qualifies it. “If I gets my rum ration regular. Besides, if he don’t take us, you know as well as I we’ll be diggin’ our own graves before long.”

At that moment Martyn spins round, stamps his boot in the dust and barks out an order to the effect that the whole crew can haul their filthy lazy arses up off the ground and get to work, toot-sweet, or suffer a knock about the ears from his military-issue, one-and-three-quarters-inch parade baton.

Ned rises wearily and braces himself on the handle of his shovel. He looks at Boyles like an old streetdog pinned beneath the wheel of a cart. “That’s right, Billy, that’s right. I’ll dig yours if you dig mine.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Three hours later Boyles and Rise are propped up against the trunk of the sole acacia tree on the knoll, drinking up the bipinnate shade. Their shovels, planted to the haft, stand like sentinels over the half-filled grave before them. The heat distorts the horizon, lays a flat hand over the dead still sea. The others are long gone.