An Embarrassment of Riches. James Howard Kunstler
now ashore. Neddy was sent abroad in the forest to procure succulent viands for our supper. I was regularly conducted into the woods for two purposes: (1) by Bilbo, to survey our whereabouts in respect to the alleged fountain of youth, the neighborhood of which we were presumably nearing, and (2) by Bessie, to be amorously abused, with the ever-vigilant Neddy ever close at hand to superintend, lest I escape. The girl grew more insatiable with every assault. I was helpless to rebuff her.
It was upon one of those enforced debaucheries that I looked around the thicket in which she was having her way with me, and spied a sprig of phrensyweed. It was just as Uncle described it—a timid shrub of compound treble leaves, irregularly toothed or lobed, cordate, slightly reddish, and conspicuously hirsute. As Bessie hauled upon my haunches, I reached over her head and seized the weed in my hand. When the shameful act was concluded, and she lay panting in stuperous exhaustion upon her back, I tucked the leafy treasure inside my shirt.
As soon as we returned to the boat, I drew Uncle to the bow, out of the others’ earshot, and took out my specimen. He rolled his eyes and groaned.
“Thou poor, luckless rattlebrain,” he said. “That is not phrensyweed.”
“No?” said I fingering it in chagrin, “’tis just as you described it: hairy, cordate leaves—”
“Hairless. Hairless!” Uncle despaired.
“O,” said I. “Well, ’twas an honest mistake. What is this weed, by the by?”
“Rhus toxicodendron,” Uncle said.
“What a grandiose appellation for such a trifling botanical.”
“’Tis poison oak, Sammy,” Uncle said.
I turned my palms down and watched the leaves flutter into the muddy water below.
“Gentlemen!” Bilbo hailed us from his throne-crate above. “May we have your attention, please?”
Uncle and I traded glances, wondering what portentous news the scoundrel was about to inflict on us now. The trio was grouped atop the cabin as though in a formal portrait scene—Bilbo, the paterfamilias, seated; Bessie at his right; and Neddy, the loyal pet, on his haunches to the left. I could not help wishing I might paint a portrait of the motley clan just in this pose, if only to have some image to fling darts at in that longed-for future when we should be rid of these incomparable dregs.
“What a treat is in store for you, my hearties! So happy is my darling Bessie that she has agreed to give a performance. What shall it be? Eh, partners? Some Milton? Herrick? A little Suckling, perhaps? Shakespeare? Spenser’s Faerie Queene? Name it and the piece is yours.”
“Has she any Cowper, per chance?” I asked with a slight sarcastical edge, alluding to one of our more modern masters of the strophe.
“Cowper!” Bilbo guffawed. “Why, that melancholy, mealy-mouthed country Methodist!”
I was taken aback.
“That morbid misfit of a moping mooncalf!” Bilbo railed on, quite beside himself with mirth, and began to recite with actorish verve:
“I see that all are wanderers gone astray
Each in his own delusions; they are lost
In chase of fancied happiness, still wooed
And never won. Dream after dream ensues;
And still are disappointed. Rings the world
With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind
And add two-thirds of the remaining half
And find the total of their hopes and fears
Dreams empty dreams …”
I was impressed that he knew the work, let alone that he had committed the verse to memory.
“What rot,” Bilbo commented and laughed again. “Well? What do you say, my lambs?”
I scratched my chest in some perplexity whilst Uncle frowned.
“All right, I shall choose for us. ‘Spring,’ by Mr. William Shakespeare.” Bilbo folded his shovel-like hands in his lap, closed his eyelids languorously, and smiled. Bessie stepped forward, cleared her throat, and curtsied.
“‘Hwing,’” she said. “Hy Hwanga Hwingwim Hwonkmah.”
“Hwang honk honk pwee hwang hwinga muh
Hwang honka-thmah honk hinga-wuh
Honk cuckoo-honk huh hwonga hue
Hoo pwanga honkoh wuh hwonkong,
Huh cuckoo honk, hunh hwonga pwee,
Hwok honka muh; huh hwun twung he,
Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo! O, hwonk huh fwuh,
Hwonpwongkong hoo huh muhwee eeh!
Hwong honka pah huh honka hwong,
Hah muhhah hong huh plungmuh hwong,
Hwong murhuh hwon, huh hoo, huh hwang
Hwong muhhuh huh huh honka honk
Huh cuckoo honk, honk hwonga pwee,
Hwok honka muh; huh hwun twong he,
Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo! O, hwonk huh fwuh,
Hwongpwongkong hoo huh muhwee eeh!”
She curtsied again. The air resounded emptily with the drone of flies. The very songbirds in the trees seemed goaded to silence. Bilbo gazed at his offspring with a look of total and unequivocal pride, a tear of joy glistening on his leathery cheek.
“Bravo! Bravo!” he lauded her, clapping his hands. Neddy joined in enthusiastically. Bessie, meanwhile, squirmed and blushed girlishly in place, as any maiden thrust to center stage might do. Uncle finally joined the applause, his heart no doubt wilted by the abysmal proceedings. He even poked me in the ribs, as if urging me to show the poor creature some sympathetic appreciation. Not wanting to appear an insensitive boor, I deigned to join in. It was at the very first clap that I felt a burning sensation in my hands. It was as though someone had tossed me an hot coal, and I, stupidly, had caught it. I looked down at my palms. The bubbly blisters of poison oak had begun to spread in all their sickening, rubescent glory.
Every cloud has its silver lining, we are told. While the affliction of my oak poisoning tormented me for days, I was relieved of my duties both as poler and as studsman to the egregious Bessie; for Bilbo grew more jealous of my health and well-being the closer we drew to our putative destination. Thus, Bilbo himself now manned the starboard pole whilst I replaced him on the cabin roof.
Even so, it did not become a pleasure ride; for besides the awful itching and burning of my skin eruption was added a new torment as the days grew ever warmer and summery: mosquitoes. By mosquitoes I am not talking about a few pesky, droning mites sullying the twilight hour, but of multitudes, clouds of ravening bloodsuckers, active at all hours of the day and night, and from which there was no escape. Not even the cabin proved a sanctuary against their relentless onslaughts. We soon learned that the only protection from the marauding hordes was to swaddle ourselves in as many layers of clothing as possible—making for, let me assure you, sheer torture in that heat. And while this swaddling protected one from the remorseless stabbings of those tiny, winged brutes, it only aggravated my prior affliction, ’til I swear I would have preferred the nullity of death than continue this manner of living. At times, I was reduced to weeping, such was my misery.
It was after several days of this continual assault, that one of us—possibly Bilbo himself—had the bright idea of firing our iron brazier and charging the coals with whatever dank rubbish the forest floor afforded that might produce the densest, foulest, most mephitic smoke possible, and thus drive away the bugs. In so doing, we had to risk attracting the notice of Indians. But no hail of arrows answered, and the smudge pot neatly quelled the siege of insects. Soon normality—such as we