The pressure on Wendell felt unbearable. He could see Iris Dunleavy’s eyes following him. She wanted an answer and this he could not give, so torn was he between his father’s authority and his innate sense of justice. The pressure had kept him from sleeping yet another night and invited in that insidious demon—the urge to find relief in private-fondling. This he fought off most of the morning, but by noon he could bear it no longer and he sadly acquiesced to the calling, setting off, heavy-hearted, for the docks. He tried not to look at the maniacs he passed in the courtyard—his brothers and sisters in lunacy.
Bernard was in an especially evil-tempered mood and would not let him take the canoe.
“Why do you do this every time?” Wendell asked.
“Because I am the dock guard and I have the responsibility to watch the boats. And you are not the owner of this boat!”
“The chef gave me permission. Like he does every single day!”
“You don’t have a note!”
“I had a note yesterday! The chef will not write me a note every single day!” Wendell’s groin ached maddeningly. Reason deserted him. “Let me at that goddamn canoe or I swear I’ll punch you! I’m a madman, can’t you see?”
Bernard looked shocked. He recovered, placed one great paw on Wendell’s chest, and pushed him down in the sand. “You think you can swear at me, do you, because your father’s the superintendent? You little bastard.”
Wendell picked himself up, his face quite hot, on the verge of just giving up and punching Bernard because he didn’t want to live anymore. Wendell cocked a trembling fist. The canoe bobbed tauntingly in the distance. Bernard crossed his arms and waited.
Wendell lowered his fist. Almost tearful with frustration and shame, he turned around and trudged off to find the chef. He spotted him in the surf, up to his knees in water, fishing. And what a day he was having. His pole was bent double from the weight of some invisible beast struggling under the sea. He was covered with sweat, knees buckling from the effort. Wendell waded out in the water to help him, splashing to the scene of battle and reaching down into the water. He felt something tug at his right hand and then break loose. Odd, he thought, staring down, why the water was turning red. He pulled his hand out of the water. All his fingers were missing on his right hand, leaving bloody nubs in their place that shot out fountains of blood. Only his thumb remained, sole survivor, pale in the sunlight.
Wendell had never heard the chef scream. It was a sound both girlish and shrill, and Wendell would have laughed had he not been staring down at the bloody water, where two of his fingers circled in the froth of an eddy. The chef grabbed him and hauled him to the beach, screaming at the top of his lungs. Wendell’s head spun and great patches of darkness swirled in front of his eyes. He fell down in a dead faint in the hot sand as the chef’s screams died in his ears, and he plunged into a sweet, brief darkness that smelled of Penelope.
When he came to, his father and the useless priest were on each side of him, leaning over close. He tried to say it didn’t hurt, not at all, but his eyelids were growing heavy again, and the sun was going down prematurely, but even though he had lost a lot of blood, it had not washed out the last of his curiosity. With Father Byrnes so near, Wendell couldn’t help but solve a mystery with his last strength. Just before he slid into another warm darkness, he reached up and pressed his good hand against the priest’s chest.
Wendell drew in his breath. His jaw fell open.
Under his hand he felt the outline of the melted cross. Evidence of miracles. Evidence of God. Half of his right was missing but his left was so much more enlightened. Wendell smiled and let the sun go down.
They carried the boy into the infirmary, where he regained consciousness just long enough to call weakly for the chef and to whisper the secret of the lamb in his ear. “He needs his milk,” Wendell said, and passed out again.
The chef went back to the kitchen, his stomach hurting, but was soothed by thoughts of the lamb. The chef, who had spent his own boyhood on a rice plantation in southern Georgia, had been taught that a rich meal equals happiness, no matter what the circumstances. And he remembered all those meals. The slaughtered hog in the wintertime just when his ribs were showing. The rabbit he’d managed to kill with a rock and then eaten raw in secret, without sharing any of it. The joy and the shame. For nothing seemed so bad to him when the gullet was full. Cakes, pies, vittles, fried chicken, broiled squirrel, found mushrooms, ripe berries. Sweet potatoes. Dandelion leaves stuffed dirty into the mouth. Bread with weevils in it. It all meant life was bearable. And now the lamb was recoverable after all.
He sharpened the ax against a block of limestone, his mood gradually improving despite the shock his system had taken. He opened the cookbook to the chapter on lamb stew and busied himself in the cupboards, taking down spices. Finally he took the ax and went to the boat dock, where Bernard kindly asked about the condition of the boy.
“He’ll live, I suppose,” said the chef, and put the ax in the canoe and set off through the pass and into the sound on the other side, rowing toward the red mangroves, where the boy had directed him.
The fence was right where he said it would be, between two midden mounds. The chef straddled the fence and stepped inside the enclosure, looking with astonishment on the careful craftsmanship of the structure, how delicately the saplings fit together. The lamb, who had been fast asleep in the grass, rose and tottered over to the chef, reared up, and placed his hooves on his thighs, gazing up at him. The chef stared down at him. The lamb blinked his dark eyes and nosed at the chef’s pockets, looking for his bottle.
That night, the dining hall filled slowly with the patients, some walking with purpose and others being led, some with bright eyes, some with vacant eyes, and yet they shared a common hunger with the sane. They took their seats and ate an offering of summer watermelon as an appetizer. Then the main dish was served. And though it was garnished with parsley and seasoned with the perfect blend of spices, and even was accompanied by fresh bread and some sea grape jelly the chef had plundered from the back of the cupboard, the men and women sighed collectively.
Chicken again.