The North Water

CHAPTER TWELVE

In the wardroom, Drax listens as the others talk. They are talking about the boy again, even though the boy is dead and gone. This afternoon they wrapped his body up in canvas and dropped it over the ship’s stern; he watched it sinking under the water. The boy is nothing now. He is not even an idea or a thought, he is nothing, but they are talking about him still. On and on they go. On and on. What is the fucking point of that? Drax chews his boiled beef, drinks deeply from his mug of tea. The beef is salty sour, but the tea is sweet. He has a bite mark on his forearm a half inch deep. He can feel it throb and itch. It would have been quicker and easier, he knows, to cut the boy’s throat, but a knife was not to hand. He doesn’t plan these things. He only acts, and each action remains separate and complete in itself: the fucking, the killing, the shitting, the eating. They could come in any order at all. No one is prior or superior to the rest. Drax lifts his dinner plate up in front of his face like a looking glass and licks it clean of gravy.

He listens.

“It’s McKendrick,” Cavendish says. “For sure it is, I know a murderer when I see one, but Brownlee thinks he needs more proof.”

Drax knows McKendrick. He is a feeble, girlish, blood-shy fellow who could not kill someone if you put a pistol in his hand, pointed it for him, and offered to pull the trigger yourself.

“Why McKendrick?” he asks.

“Because he’s an infamous sodomite. You can see him in the dockyard taprooms every night, buying arse and giggling with the other pansies.”

Drax nods. McKendrick will be his stand-in then, he thinks, his scapegoat. He will dangle from the rope end, while Drax stands and watches and applauds.

“What kind of proof does Brownlee look for?” he asks.

“He wants a witness. Someone who has seen the two of them together.”

Drax rubs the crumbs from his beard, grumbles out a fart, and then reaches into his pocket for his pouch of negro-head tobacco.

“I’ve seen them together,” he says.

The others look at him.

“When?” Sumner says.

“I seen them standing by the deckhouse late one night. McKendrick mooning over the boy, cooing and billing, paddling his neck, trying to give him little kisses. The boy didn’t appear to like it much. ’Bout a week ago that was.”

Cavendish claps his hands together and laughs.

“That should do it,” he says.

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Sumner asks. “You were there when the captain asked us all what we had seen.”

“Must have slipped my mind,” Drax says. “My wits are not quite so sharply tuned as yours are, Mr. Sumner, I suppose. I’m the forgetful type, see.”

Sumner looks at him, and Drax looks back. He feels easy and qualmless. He knows the surgeon’s kind too well — he will quibble and ask questions all day long, but he will never dare to act. He is a talker and not a doer.

They go along to Brownlee’s cabin, and Drax tells the captain what he saw. Brownlee has McKendrick brought up from the hold in irons and instructs Drax to repeat what he has said word for word in front of the prisoner.

“I saw him laying hands on the dead boy,” he says calmly. “Trying to kiss and cuddle with him. By the deckhouse this was.”

“And why did you not tell me this before now?”

“I didn’t think of it before, but when McKendrick’s name was mentioned as the murderer, then it all came back.”

“That is a fucking lie,” McKendrick says. “I never once touched the boy.”

“I saw what I saw,” Drax says. “And no man can tell me I didn’t.”

He finds the lying comes easy enough, of course. Words are just noises in a certain order, and he can use them any way he wishes. Pigs grunt, ducks quack, and men tell lies: that is how it generally goes.

“And you will swear to this?” Brownlee asks him. “In a court of law?”

“On the Holy Bible,” Drax says. “Yes I will.”

“I will enter your account in the ship’s log then, and have you set your mark on it,” Brownlee says. “It is best to have a written record.”

McKendrick’s previous calmness has dissolved now. His face, pale and narrow, is badged with redness, and he is shaking with rage.

“There is not a word of truth in it,” he says. “Not a word of truth. He is spewing out lies.”

“I have no reason to lie,” Drax says. “Why would I trouble myself with that?”

Brownlee looks to Cavendish.

“Is there bad feeling between these two men?” he asks. “Any reason to consider the story may be false or malicious?”

“None that I have heard of,” Cavendish says.

“Have you two shipped together afore?” Brownlee asks them.

Drax shakes his head.

“I barely know the carpenter,” he says. “But I saw what I saw by the deckhouse. And I am telling it as it was.”

“But I know who you are, Henry Drax,” McKendrick says fiercely back. “I know where you have been and what you have done there.”

Drax sniffs and shakes his head.

“You don’t know nothing about me,” he says.

Brownlee looks to McKendrick.

“If you have some accusation to make, you should make it now,” he says. “If not, I would advise you to close your trap and keep it closed until the magistrate asks you to open it again.”

“I never touched that boy. Boys are not my taste, and whatsoever I done with my fellow men I never had no accusations or complaints concerning that. This man here, the one who is lying about me, who seems set to get me hanged by the neck, has done much worse and more unnatural crimes than I ever done.”

“You’ll dig yourself into a deeper hole with such blabbing,” Cavendish warns him.

“A man can’t get much deeper than fucking dead,” McKendrick says.

“What crimes are you speaking of?” Sumner says.

“Ask him what he done in the Marquesas,” McKendrick says, looking straight at Drax. “Ask him what he et when he was out there.”

“Do you understand him?” Brownlee says. “What is he talking about now?”

“I have passed some time with the South Sea niggers,” Drax explains, “that’s all it is. I have some tattoos they gave me on my back, and a fund of good and profitable stories to show for it, nothing more.”

“What ship were you on?” Brownlee asks him.

“The Dolly, out of New Bedford.”

“Would you take the word of a cannibal against that of an honest and God-fearing white man?” McKendrick shouts. “Will any magistrate in their right mind?”

Drax laughs at this.

“I’m no fucking cannibal,” he says. “Don’t pay no heed to his bollocks.”

Brownlee shakes his head and sniffs.

“I have rarely heard such desperate nonsense,” he says. “Take this shameless piece of shite below and chain him to the mainmast before I lose my fucking temper.”

When McKendrick is gone, Brownlee enters Drax’s account of what he saw into the ship’s log and has him certify it with his mark.

“You will be expected to testify in the court, no doubt, when McKendrick comes to trial,” Brownlee says. “And the log will be shown as evidence also. McKendrick’s lawyer, if he can afford one, will attempt to blacken your name, I ’spect. That is what such vultures generally do. But you will stand up to him, I’m sure.”

“I don’t like to be accused or talked at in that way,” Drax admits. “That don’t please me any.”

“The word of a lone sodomite will carry no great weight, you can be sure of that. You must stand your ground, that’s all.”

Drax nods.

“I’m an honest man,” he says. “I tell only what I saw.”

“Then you have nothing to fear.”