Me Tanner, You Jane

Chapter 11

Fat black flies buzzed in the reeds that lined the riverbank. Bees worried the trumpet-shaped blood-hued blossoms of a puri-puri vine, which in turn worried the trunk of a stately wali tree. To our right, one of the younger members of the company flipped pebbles into the sluggish brown water.

I squatted and explored myself for lice. I felt as sluggish and brown as the Yellowfoot River. It was noon, and it was hot, and after a rough morning’s march to the river we were playing the usual game of hurry up and wait. I stifled a yawn and scratched an itch and tried to remember what coffee tasted like.

Bowman was giving Plum a hard time. “You sure do look like a boy,” I heard him say, “but I know better, don’t I? Because I had a long uninterrupted look at you at that mission, Plum kitten, and that wasn’t no boy I was lookin’ at.”

I don’t know whether Plum blushed or blanched or what. It was impossible to tell beneath the coloring.

“And I sure did like your color, Plum kitten. Earl Grey tea with sweet cream in it. That’s rare, that combination. Black is beautiful, but brown can stick around when it looks like you.”

Plum looked extremely uncomfortable. He was bugging her, and she didn’t like it, but at the same time she wasn’t prepared to reply sharply or get up and walk away. He had that effect on people. And I suppose, too, that in part she gloried in the flattery. It would have been extraordinary if she hadn’t.

I found it annoying, and not merely out of simple jealousy combined with my own protective feelings toward the girl. These factors were there, but so was the conviction that our situation called for more urgent matters than verbal seduction. In less than twenty-four hours we were scheduled to participate in an act of barbarism unparalleled in our experience and unexceeded in human history. The idea of depriving a gaggle of wretched lepers of their few remaining organs was utterly appalling. And the knowledge that every passing hour increased the likelihood that we, too, would be similarly deprived did nothing much for my state of mind either.

I said, “Look, we just don’t have time to waste. We have to cut out of here before that raid.”

“Can’t be done, Tanner cat.”

“It has to be done.”

“During, maybe. If we run into a little resistance at the leper place there might be enough going on so that the three of us could shove one of the dugouts back into the water and get clear before they knew we were gone. Not much chance the lepers will put up a big fight though, is there? Some of the staff will have guns for defense against animals, but the way this gang fights they’ll be out of the play before they get to their guns, and what are the lepers goin’ to do? Beat us off with their stumps? No, tomorrow night’s the time. Everybody be drunk and passed out, and we can slip a boat into the river and be miles away before they know we’re gone.”

“Why can’t we do that tonight?”

“No chance.”

“Why not?”

“Because they won’t be drinking tonight, man. And when they don’t drink they don’t do anything sloppy.” He let out a long sigh. “Used to be different before I came along. They would all sleep at once, didn’t even post a single damned sentry. I changed all that. Taught ’em to post a dozen men at a time on two-hour watches. They ring the whole camp and keep in touch with birdcall hoots.”

“You taught them that, did you?”

He nodded.

“And taught them to fight dirty.”

“Well, if you can’t lick ’em, you join ’em.”

“There’s a difference between joining them and turning them into a professional army.” I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, opening them at the sound of a giggle and a slap. Plum had giggled, and Bowman had been slapped. I did my best to ignore this.

I said, “All right. We’ve got to make our move tonight. It may not be as hard as you think. For one thing, they don’t expect anything. I don’t mean to be critical, but these troops of yours don’t seem geared for long-range planning, Sam. They aren’t the thinking type.”

“True. They live in the moment.”

“In the now. Exactly. Which means that it might be difficult to take them with a headlong rush or a sudden surprise attack, but that calculated subterfuge might have a chance.”

“In other words,” said Plum, “we con them.”

“Or in still better words,” said Bowman, “we think white. We fake out the trusting natives when they least expect it.”

He sounded bitter. “Maybe it offends your black pride,” I said, “but try to live with it. These are desperate times. After all, the odds are something like fifty to three.”

“Two.”

“Huh?”

“Fifty to two,” Bowman said. “You won’t be playing.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Well, she told me last night, man, but I was saving it for a surprise. Sheena, man. Like Uncle Sam in all them recruitin’ posters. She wants you.”

I blinked.

“Tonight,” he said, grinning pleasantly. “You and Sheena, Tanner cat. It’s your turn in the barrel.”

An hour before sundown Samuel Lonestar Bowman and I made our way over a stretch of reasonably clear ground to the site where Sheena’s tent was pitched. Two sentries crouched out in front. They reminded me of the lions at the New York Public Library. One of them was whittling a branch. His knife had a sharply curved blade, and looked menacing. The other also held a knife. The blade was longer and straighter, and he wasn’t carving anything with it. He was just holding it and looking dangerous.

Bowman spoke to the carver, reeling off several ornate sentences of gibberish. The sentry did not appear at first to have heard. He went on whittling for a few moments. Then he straightened up abruptly, put down the hunk of wood, and tucked a knife into the waistband of his trousers. He went into Sheena’s tent. The other sentry contrived to look twice as menacing as usual in order to take up the slack.

The carver reappeared wordlessly, dropped to a crouch, picked up the chunk of wood, and whipped out his knife. He resumed carving, ignoring us completely. This was evidently his way of approving our credentials. Alone I might have been a little diffident about brushing on past him, but Sam led the way and I only had to follow.

Inside, a candle glowed to illuminate the interior of the tent. It was more spacious than I would have guessed, and far more elaborately appointed. When you considered that the tent was a mobile unit, taken up when the troupe broke camp and pitched anew when the day’s march ended, it seemed surprisingly comfortable. It was light-tight, and it had room enough for a lush bed of straw and leaves on which our matriarch was doing her supine white goddess number. Her platinum-gold hair cascaded over bare shoulders. Animal skins covered her breasts and lower body. One leg was extended, the other doubled up, as in Italian paintings of orgiastic pagan deities.

Bowman said, “This be Tanner, who comes to be husband to Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and hope of heaven.” He bowed his head. “What God has laid together, let no man put asunder.” He said a few more words, bowed again, and backed out of the tent.

I had been well coached, and knew my part. I dropped to one knee beside her, genuflected, got to my feet. I shucked off the shapeless cotton shirt and trousers and stood naked for her inspection. We had renewed the body make-up with fresh roots and berries, and I had collected a handful of cochineal beetles which supplied the red dye. The candle provided imperfect light, and Sheena squinted to study me.

I felt my stomach muscles tighten, felt a pulse working in my throat. This was the crucial moment. Bowman was waiting outside, ready to spring into action if the thing blew up in our faces. With luck I might be able to cool Sheena before she sounded the alarm, and we might have a chance to make a desperate break. But if she didn’t tip now, our odds improved hearteningly.

“She’s right on top of things at the beginning,” Bowman had told me. “There’s a first-rate mind underneath all the flakiness, and now and then she can use it. But if she doesn’t make you as white right off the bat, you could be home free. Because after she performs the marriage ceremony, she gets involved in consummating it, and she’s got a real genius for consummation. She gets all involved in what she’s doing. Once she’s in the swing of things she wouldn’t know if she was being humped by a white man or a black man or a donkey. She works a man half to death, but you don’t want to think it’s all a burden. There are things about that woman I am going to miss a whole lot. But I don’t want to spoil it for you, Tanner cat. You just go and have yourself a time.”

The trouble was that I didn’t feel like having myself a time. If I had felt any less virile I would have sat down and written regional fiction for The New Yorker. It struck me that if I passed inspection I would just fail the road test anyway. And that would knock the props out from under our escape plan.

Sheena’s eyes scanned me. I waited, and she nodded slowly, and it seemed that I had passed inspection. She seemed neither wildly delighted with what she saw nor abysmally depressed. She motioned with one hand, and I sank again to my knees.

She said, “And thou shalt love the Goddess with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this evening shall guide thy spirit all the length of thy days. And thou shall write them upon the doorposts of thy house, and shall make them as a sign in blood upon thy loins. And thou shalt-”

It went on like this, the ceremony did, and while none of it made very much literal sense I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had heard it all before, part here and part there. Now and then I recognized a part from the standard marriage ritual, and ultimately we did reach the nitty-gritty:

“Do you, Tanner, take this woman, Sheena, as your bride and goddess, to love, honor, and obey, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, until death do you in?”

“ Katanga Salami Nokomis.”

“Then by the authority vested in me I do proclaim us woman and husband. Sticks and stones shall break thy bones but names shall never hurt thee.” She shrugged off the pelts, exposing her naked flesh. Her body was so flawlessly formed and so lushly designed it seemed incredible that she did not fold into three parts, that her navel was indeed unstapled. She was honestly too good to be true, and the effect was perversely anaphrodisiacal – that which was so perfectly designed to turn one on had the effect of turning one (more precisely, me) off.

This may reveal a tragic flaw in my own character. I’m not sure. I seem to be encumbered with an unwillingness to believe in the ideal when I encounter it. Spectacular scenery makes me feel that I am watching a film or examining a picture postcard. When I see an extraordinary hairdo I assume the lady is wearing a wig. Plants growing luxuriantly appear plastic. It has occurred to me that this inability to accept perfection may be a corollary to the idea of a man’s reach properly exceeding his grasp. And I would have liked to pursue the thought further, but I had other things to contend with.

Sheena, for example.

“Dearly beloved,” she was saying, “we have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Dust thou art, to dust returneth, and may God have mercy on your soul. You may fuck the bride.”

Outside, I knew, Plum and Bowman were getting ready to go into their acts. For simplicity’s sake, we had divided the task of escape into three parts, like Gaul. It was Plum ’s job to incapacitate about a dozen long dugout canoes, the entire navy of Sheena’s entire army. It was Bowman’s job to incapacitate somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty men, and it was my job to incapacitate Sheena herself. By any sort of logical analysis, my job was the easiest of the three.

I would have traded even with either of them.

I was still kneeling there, and thinking about this, when Sheena repeated her last sentence. There was a note of irritation in her tone. I had missed my cue, and she didn’t seem to like it. It seemed to me that this must happen rather often, since Bowman and I were alone among her husbands in being able to understand what she was saying. I guess the others were good at nonverbal communication and simply did what came naturally.

Time to go to work, I reminded myself. Nice work if you can get it, I told myself. Plenty of trouble if you can’t get it, I added. Up.

I reached for the bride.