Forbidden Places
A COMMOTION OF VOICES – ANGRY SHOUTING – REACHED our ears. No sooner had we climbed the gangplank than we found Junior and Charley at loggerheads on the stern deck, with Skipper Brenneman interposed between them, striving to keep them apart. The two younger crewmembers looked ready to tear out each other’s throats.
We swiftly ascertained the bone of contention. Put simply, Junior had killed Bessie. He insisted that it had been an accident. The cat had got underfoot and he had inadvertently trampled it to death. Charley maintained otherwise. He had been in the galley preparing supper when a piteous whimpering had reached his ears, followed by loud reverberant thumps upon the decking as of a booted foot descending repeatedly. Rushing out, he had come upon the cat’s bloodied remains just aft of the cabin structure. Junior was hunkered nearby, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked from exertion.
The big Negro shed hot tears as he spat out this indictment, while Junior glared at him with jeering defiance, chest puffed up. I myself had no doubt as to the latter’s culpability. It was just like him to strike at Charley through such a vicious, vindictive act.
Yet it was his word against Charley’s, and inevitably his father favoured him. The skipper ordered Charley to back down and said he would not tolerate such insubordination. If Junior claimed it was an accident, then it was an accident, and that was an end to it.
Charley begged to differ. He lunged forward, fist clenched to strike Junior. Such was his raw strength, it was all Nate and the skipper could do to restrain him. Eventually he calmed down and withdrew, hooded-eyed and muttering, to his cabin. At that point Junior exclaimed that the death of the cat was “no great loss”. The animal “weren’t proper” and should never have been allowed to exist in the first place. Pointing a forthright, accusatory finger at me, he said that I was up to no good in that laboratory of mine, messing around with Mother Nature and turning out freaks like a cat that thought it was a dog. All he, Junior, had done was fix a mistake. Not that he had done it on purpose, he hastened to add.
I felt a rage of my own mounting within me. It was born both of indignation on Charley’s behalf and of a sense of professional affront, for Junior had destroyed my handiwork – one of my greatest scientific successes – with as much consideration as if it were a child’s toy. Although I have never been one to engage in physical altercation, I found my hands balling into fists and was seized by the urge to take a swing at the first mate. His smug insouciance was hard to bear, and I reckoned that driving a punch into his nose would erase the expression very nicely. What prevented me from turning thought into reality was the fear that my pugilism would be inadequate to the task and that Junior’s retaliation, even though hampered by his leg, would be comprehensive.
The matter became moot anyway, since at that very moment we were hailed from the riverbank.
There were five of them, a group of Red Indians with bows and arrows who sought to come aboard, and the solemn politeness with which we were addressed by their spokesman – the largest and most imposing amongst them – seemed to brook no refusal. Nate deferred to Skipper Brenneman. The Belle was his boat and he should have say over who trod her decks. The skipper deflected the responsibility back onto Nate. It was Nate’s money that was financing the trip. The decision should be his.
Nate enquired of the Indians whether they came in peace, to which their spokesman’s reply was that if they came with hostile intent, we would all be dead by now. The remark amused his fellow tribesmen, and Nate belatedly and awkwardly answered their laughter with a laugh of his own. He beckoned the Indians aboard. At the same time, I saw him cast an eye towards the Winchester, which lay where I had set it down upon our return to the boat, leaning against the rail, not far from his reach. The skipper, meanwhile, surreptitiously drew the corner of a tarpaulin over the remains of Bessie.
The Indians having joined us on the Belle, their spokesman – whose English was excellent – wasted no time in making introductions. He was Amos Russell, known amongst his own people as Swift Brown Bear, and was sachem of the Pocasset, a subdivision of the Wampanoag tribe. He shook hands with all of us, his grip leathery and firm, and chose not to remark upon the fact that Junior reciprocated the amicable gesture with the utmost grudgingness and wiped his palm on the seat of his pants straight after. When the skipper asked him if they had come to trade – wampum for tobacco, perhaps – Russell shook his head and said that he merely wished to offer some advice.
The Wampanoag chief turned to Nate and me and, in a voice that was deep and husky, not unlike a growl, proceeded to inform us that we had strayed where we ought not to go. He and his companions had been out hunting when they happened upon us wandering through the woods from the direction of one of “the forbidden places”. They had followed us at a distance as we made our way back to the boat, and had elected to deliver this warning lest we should choose to make another journey to that same spot. We had been lucky not to run into something that might end our lives, and might not be so lucky a second time. There were certain sites where humans were not welcome, the haunts of “bad spirits” who were known to cause harm. The Wampanoag and all the other Indian nations in the region were at pains to shun these places, and we should too. The most sensible course of action we could take was to turn our boat around and head back downriver whence we came. Nothing in this corner of Massachusetts was safe for people like us, white men who were ignorant of the secret ways of the world and who blundered headlong into peril, foolishly believing that our science and our gunpowder would protect us.
As he uttered the word “gunpowder” Russell wafted a hand towards the Winchester dismissively. The rifle’s proximity had not escaped his attention but did not appear to concern him in the least. With some justification, he seemed to feel that he and his four comrades had little to fear from us. Aside from the Winchester we carried no arms, whereas the Indians had their bows and also tomahawks, lodged in their waistbands. They were, moreover, sinewy and lithe individuals. In their eyes even the weather-beaten, rugged old skipper must have looked foppish and sedate, and I doubt Charley, had he been present at this powwow, would have intimidated them, for all his great bulk.
Nate heard out the sachem with a marked show of respect, which I found surprising, my expectation being that he would have pooh-poohed him, if not scorned him outright. He told Russell that he appreciated the admonition and the philanthropic intent behind it, and that he would hereupon act accordingly. He then invited the Wampanoag braves to share a drink with us. He had some single malt whiskey – “top-notch firewater” – and a glass or two would cement cordial relations between white man and redskin, a liquid peace pipe.
In hindsight I can see that this was not the magnanimous gesture it might appear. The problems Indians had with strong liquor were well known. With no natural tolerance for alcohol, they were as susceptible to its deleterious effects as they were to the ravages of smallpox and influenza. Nate must have known that, and I realise now that when Amos Russell hesitated in responding, it was because he discerned the calculated insult hidden within the offer. The sachem’s topaz eyes briefly took on a flinty aspect, as though he were gauging whether or not to inveigh against Nate. In the end, he played my friend at his own game, with all the mannered sophistication of a blue-blood socialite, regretfully declining the invitation.
No sooner had the Wampanoag braves departed, gliding soundlessly into the forest and out of sight, than Nate let out a bark of delight. “Hah! Did you hear him? Did you, Zach? Big chief Amos just told us what we needed to know.”
I professed myself puzzled. Surely Russell had said nothing other than that there was danger hereabouts, a fact of which we were not exactly unaware. And, I added, common sense dictated that we heed his words. I was not advocating going home, just that we should tread henceforth with greater caution.
Junior Brenneman chipped in, stating that when an “Injun” started spouting guff about bad spirits and suchlike, a white man ought to pay it no nevermind. That was his duty as a civilised being and a Christian. The skipper agreed, as did Nate, although the latter’s reasons for disregarding Russell’s warning were more specific, as he confided to me later that evening in private. The sachem had, it transpired, given away more than he meant to. “Nothing in this corner of Massachusetts is safe for people like you,” he had said, from which Nate inferred that there were more things out there like mi-go, stranger things, more wondrous things. His reading of the Necronomicon had suggested as much. Amos Russell had confirmed it. “The forbidden places,” Nate added. “Places plural. Zach, we may have struck out today, but I sincerely believe that further upriver lie a wealth of opportunities. There will be more expeditions and they will not all be wild goose chases.”
