Henderson the Rain King (8 page)

VIII

Now, I come from a stock that has been damned and derided for more than a hundred years, and when I sat smashing bottles beside the eternal sea it wasn't only my great ancestors, the ambassadors and statesmen, that people were recalling, but the loony ones as well. One got himself mixed up in the Boxer Rebellion, believing he was an Oriental; one was taken for $300,000 by an Italian actress; one was carried away in a balloon while publicizing the suffrage movement. There have been plenty of impulsive or imbecile parties in our family (in French Am-Bay-Seel is a stronger term). A generation ago one of the Henderson cousins got the Corona Italia medal for rescue work during the earthquake at Messina, Sicily. He was tired of rotting from idleness at Rome. He was bored, and would ride his horse inside the Palazzo down from his bedroom and into the salon. After the earthquake he reached Messina by the first train and it is said that he didn't sleep for two entire weeks, but pulled apart hundreds of ruins and rescued countless families. This indicates that a service ideal exists in our family, though sometimes in a setting of mad habit. One of the old Hendersons, although far from being a minister, used to preach to his neighbors, and he would call them by hitting a bell in his yard with a crowbar. They all had to come. They say that I resemble him. We have the same neck size, twenty-two. I might cite the fact that I held up a mined bridge in Italy and kept it from collapsing until the engineers arrived. But this is in the line of military duty, and a better instance was provided by my behavior in the hospital when I broke my leg. I spent all my time in the children's wards, entertaining and cheering up the kids. On my crutches I hopped around the entire place in a hospital gown; I couldn't be bothered to tie the tapes and was open behind, and the old nurses ran after me to cover me, but I wouldn't hold still. Here we were in the farthest African mountains--damn it, they couldn't be much farther!--and it was a shame that these good people should suffer so from frogs. But it was natural for me to want to relieve them. It so happened that this was something I could probably do, and it was the least that I could undertake under the circumstances. Look what this Queen Willatale had done for me--read my character, revealed the grun-tu-molani to me. I figured that these Arnewi, no exception to the rules, had developed unevenly; they might have the wisdom of life, but when it came to frogs they were helpless. This I already had explained to my own satisfaction. The Jews had Jehovah, but wouldn't defend themselves on the Sabbath. And the Eskimos would perish of hunger with plenty of caribou around because it was forbidden to eat caribou in fish season, or fish in caribou season. Everything depends on the values--the values. And where's reality? I ask you, where is it? I myself, dying of misery and boredom, had happiness, and objective happiness, too, all around me, as abundant as the water in that cistern where cattle were forbidden to drink. And therefore I thought, this will be one of those mutual-aid deals; where the Arnewi are irrational I'll help them, and where I'm irrational they'll help me. The moon had already come forward with her long face toward the east and a fleece of clouds behind. It gave me something to gauge the steepness of the mountains by, and I believe they approached the ten-thousand-foot mark. The evening air turned very green and yet the beams of the moon kept their whiteness intact. The thatch became more than ever like feathers, dark, heavy, and plumy. I said to Prince Itelo as we were standing beside one of these iridescent heaps--his company of wives and relatives were still in attendance with the squash. flower parasols--"Prince, I'm going to have a shot at those animals in the cistern. Because I am sure I can handle them. You aren't involved at all, and don't even have to give an opinion one way or another. I'm doing this on my own responsibility." "Oh, Mistah Henderson--you 'strodinary man. But sir. Do not be carry away." "Ha, ha, Prince--pardon me, but this is where you happen to be wrong. If I don't get carried away I never accomplish anything. But that's okay," I said. "Just forget about it." So then he left us at our hut and Romilayu and I had supper, which consisted mainly of cold yams and hard tack, to which I added a supplement of vitamin pills. On top of this I had a slug of whisky and then I said, "Come on, Romilayu, we'll go over to that cistern and case it by moonlight." I took along a flashlight to use under the thatch, for, as previously noted, a shed was built over it. These frogs really had it better than anyone else. Here, due to the moisture, grew the only weeds in the village, and this odd variety of mountain frog, mottled green and white, was hopping and splashing, swimming. They say the air is the final home of the soul, but I think that as far as the senses go you probably can't find a sweeter medium than water. So the life of those frogs must have been beautiful, and they fulfilled their ideal, it seemed to me, as they coasted by our feet with those bright wet skins and their white legs and the emotional throats, their eyes like bubbles. While the rest of us, represented by Romilayu and me, were hot and sweaty, burning. In the thatch-intensified shadow of evening my face felt as if it were on fire, as if it were the opening of a volcano. My jaws were all swelled out and I half believed that if I had turned off the flashlight we could have seen those frogs in the cistern by the glare emanating from me. "They've got it very good, these creatures," I said to Romilayu, "while it lasts." And I swung the big flashlight to and fro over the water in which they were massed. Under other circumstances I might have taken a tolerant or even affectionate attitude toward them. Basically, I had nothing against them. "What fo' you laugh, sah?" "Am I laughing? I didn't realize," I said. "These are really great singers. Back in Connecticut we have mostly cheepers, but these have bass voices. Listen," I said, "I can make out all kinds of things. Ta dam-dam-dum. Agnus Dei--Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere no-ho-bis! It's Mozart. Mozart, I swear! They've got a right to sing miserere, poor little bastards, as the hinge of fate is about to swing back on them." "Poor little bastards" was what I said, but in actual fact I was gloating--yuck-yuck-yuck! My heart was already fattening in anticipation of their death. We hate death, we fear death, but when you get right down to cases, there's nothing like it. I was sorry for the cows, yes, and on the humane side I was fine. I checked out one hundred per cent. But still I hungered to let fall the ultimate violence on these creatures in the cistern. At the same time I couldn't help being aware of the discrepancies between us. On the one side these fundamentally harmless little semi-fishes who were not to blame for the fear they were held in by the Arnewi. On the other side, a millionaire several times over, six feet four in height, weighing two hundred and thirty pounds, socially prominent, and a combat officer holding the Purple Heart and other decorations. But I wasn't responsible for this, was I? However, it remains to be recorded that I was once more fatally embroiled with animals, according to the prophecy of Daniel which I had never been able to shake off--"They shall drive you from among men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field." Not counting the pigs, to whom I related myself legitimately as a breeder, there was an involvement with an animal very recently which weighed heavily on my mind and conscience. On the eve of my assault on the frogs it was this creature, a cat, I was thinking of, and I had better tell why. I have told about the building remodeled by Lily on our property. She rented it to a mathematics teacher and his wife. The house had no insulation and the tenants complained and I evicted them. It was over them and their cat that Lily and I were having our row when Miss Lenox dropped dead. This cat was a young male with brown and gray smoky fur. Twice these tenants came over to the house to discuss the heating. Pretending to know nothing about it, I followed the matter with interest, spying on them from upstairs when they arrived. I listened to their voices in the parlor and knew Lily was trying to conciliate them. I was lurking in the second-floor hall in my red bathrobe and the Wellingtons from the barnyard. Subsequently when Lily tried to discuss it with me I said to her, "It's your headache. I never wanted strangers around anyway." I believed that she had brought them on the place to make friends of them and I was opposed. "What bothers them? Is it the pigs?" "No," Lily said, "they haven't said a word against the pigs." "Hah! I have seen their faces when the mash was cooking," I said, "and I can't understand why you have to have a second house fixed up when you won't even take care of the first." The second and last time they came much more determined to make their complaint, and I watched from the bedroom, brushing my hair with a pair of brushes; I saw the smoky torn cat following them, bounding through the broken stalks of the frozen vegetable garden. Broccoli looks spectacular when the frost hits it. The conference began below, and I couldn't stand it any more and started to stamp my feet on the floor above the parlor. Finally I yelled down the stairs, "Get the hell out of here, and move off my property!" The tenant said, "We will, but we want our deposit and you ought to foot the moving bill too." "Good," I said, "you come up and collect the money from me," and I pounded in the stairwell with my Wellingtons and yelled, "Get out!" And so they did, but the point is they abandoned their cat, and I didn't want a cat going wild on my place. Cats gone wild are bad business, and this was a very powerful animal. I had watched him hunting and playing with a chipmunk. For five years once we had suffered with such a cat who lived in an old woodchuck burrow near the pond. He fought all the barn toms and gave them septic scratches and tore out their eyes. I tried to kill him with poisoned fish and smoke bombs and spent whole days in the woods on my knees near his burrow, waiting to get him. Therefore I said to Lily, "If this animal goes wild like the other one, you'll regret it." "The people are coming back for him," she said. "I don't believe it for a minute. They've dumped him. And you don't know what wild cats can be like. Why, I'd rather have a lynx around the place." We had a hired man named Hannock, and I went to the barn and said to him, "Where's the torn those damned civilians left behind?" It was then late in the fall and he was storing apples, tossing aside windfalls for what pigs there were left. Hannock was very much opposed to the pigs, which had ruined the grass and the garden. "He's no trouble, Mr. Henderson. He's a good little cat," said Hannock. "Did they pay you to take care of him?" I said, and he was afraid to say yes and lied to me. In actuality they had given him two bottles of whisky and a case of dried milk (Starlac). He said, "Naw, they didn't, but I will. He ain't no trouble to me." "There's going to be no animal abandoned on my property," I said, and I went over the farm calling, "Minnie-Minnie." Finally the cat came into my hands and didn't fight when I lifted him by the scruff and carried him to a room in the attic and locked him in. I sent a registered letter special delivery to the owners and gave them until four o'clock next day to come for him. Otherwise, I threatened, I'd have him put away. I showed Lily the receipt of the registered letter and told her the cat was in my possession. She tried to prevail on me and even got all dressed at dinner time, with powder on her face. At the table I could feel her tremble and knew she was about to reason with me. "What's the matter? You're not eating," I said, for she normally eats a great deal and I have had restaurant people tell me they never saw a woman who could put away the food like that. Two plank steaks and six bottles of beer are not too much for her when she's in condition. As a matter of fact, I am very proud of Lily's capacity. "You're not eating, either," was Lily's answer. "That's because I've got something on my mind. I'm extremely sore," I said. "I'm in a state." "Baby, don't be like that," she said. But the emotion, whatever it was, filled me so that my very flesh disagreed with the bones. I felt terrible. I didn't tell Lily what I was planning to do, but at 3:59 next day, no answer having come from the ex-tenants, I went upstairs to carry out my threat. I carried a shopping bag from Grusan's market and in it was the pistol. There was plenty of light in the small wallpapered attic room. I said to the torn cat, "They've cast you away, kitty." He flattened himself to the wall, arched and bristling. I tried to aim at him from above and finally had to sit on the floor, sighting between the legs of a bridge table which was there. In this small space, I didn't want to fire more than a single shot. From reading about Pancho Villa I had picked up the Mexican method of marksmanship, which is to aim with the forefinger on the barrel and press the trigger with the middle finger, because the forefinger is the most accurate pointer at our disposal. Thus I got the center of his head under my (somewhat twisted) forefinger, and fired, but my will was not truly bent on his death, and I missed. That is the only explanation for missing at a distance of eight feet. I opened the door and he bolted. On the staircase, with her beautiful neck stretched forth and her face white with fear, was Lily. To her a pistol fired in a house meant only one thing--it recalled the death of her father. The shock of the shot was still upon me, the empty shopping bag hung by my side. "What did you do?" said Lily. "I tried to do what I said I would. Hell!" The phone began to ring and I went past her to answer it. It was the tenant's wife, and I said, "What did you wait so long for? Now it's almost too late." She burst into tears and I myself felt very bad. And I yelled, "Come and take your bloody damned cat away. You city people don't care about animals. Why, you can't just abandon a cat." The confusing thing is that I always have some real basic motivation, and how I go so wrong, I can never understand. And so, on the brink of the cistern, the problem of how to eliminate the frogs touched off this other memory. "But this is different," I thought. "Here it is clear, and besides, it will show what I meant by going after that cat." So I hoped, for my heart was wrung by the memory, and I felt tremendous sorrow. It had been a very close thing--almost a deadly sin. Facing the practical situation, however, I considered various alternatives, like dredging, or poisons,