The Merry Spinster

Aquinas says passion deserves neither praise nor blame, and I have no quarrel with that. If acedia, that noonday demon, is a kind of passion—a species of sadness, as the Damascene says—then it is no sin in itself. Yet surely passions can be blameworthy when attached to unworthy objects. Surely the immoderation of such spiritual torpor, if left unchecked, is, if not yet full sin in bloom, at least the error that may in time lead to sin. For our story, it all led to sin in the end, and it all began with the listlessness and self-forgetting that comes not from God.

* * *

The woman, in this instance, was wicked, and the man was stupid. That is not always the case between women and men, but that is how it ever was with the two of them. There came a great wickedness out of a small fault; I saw it with my own eyes. Together they committed a wickedness that has left me with six children to bring up in my old age, when I should be preparing myself for a crown and glory. Had I known what would come of it, I would have smothered Johnnie Croy in his crib before he ever grew into a man. But I never had the right to kill him until he sinned a great sin, of course.

There are six eternal sins that defy the Holy Ghost and merit Hell: Despair, or believing that one’s own sin is more powerful than divine grace; Presumption, seeking pardon without repentance or glory without worthiness; Resistance, to truth; Envy of the spiritual glory of a brother or resenting the increase of grace in the world; Impenitence, or not repenting of a sin already committed; Obstinacy, willfully intending to grow further in sin.

Johnnie was tall and well formed, and people liked to look at him and to listen to him talk. He had a fine voice, warm and rumbling, and it made you smile to hear it. I liked him fine myself, but I did not mistake any of his talents for virtue. The Lord sees not as man sees, but looks on the heart.

He claimed to have first seen the woman when he was out collecting driftwood, which certainly may have been true. He had heard her singing before he saw her, and of course her voice was so piercing and sweet and otherworldly that he had to abandon his labor and listen to her. Well, I call that sloth, however pretty the music. She was sitting on a rock way out past the tide line and combing her long hair—because her people neither work nor pray and have endless time for vanities.

You will think me grim, and an enemy of joy, to begrudge my son a snatch of music or my son’s love of her pretty hair. Well, I saw what came of it. I like music and pretty things as much as anyone, within reason, but I also need driftwood more than I need stories of invisible concerts. We sell abstract driftwood sculptures to mainlanders, who love buying sticks of wood shaped to look vaguely like horses’ heads, and chairs no one can sit in, and great big knobby burls to put on their coffee tables. They especially like buying them from flinty old islanders and their good-looking sons, and since fishing doesn’t bring in what it used to, we end up needing a lot of driftwood.

So instead of collecting driftwood or fishing or looking to his chores, my good-looking son spent the afternoon watching a damp woman groom herself on a rock. Like jet her hair was, which grew all the way down to the back of her knees, and her eyes were fine, and my good-looking son, who had already committed the sin of sloth, grew obstinate, and fully intended to sin again. A woman is not a sin, mind, but this woman was, so of course my son came home and told me he could not love anyone else but her. “You don’t have to love anyone else if you haven’t a mind to,” I said, “but I’d be much obliged if you could love her and bring home driftwood at the same time.”

“How can you talk of driftwood when my heart lies somewhere in the sea?” he said. “Don’t speak to me of driftwood; I care nothing for it.”

“Well, if it comes to that,” I said mildly, “I don’t much like it myself, but I do enjoy being able to pay for things like tea and whisky and tobacco when I go to the grocer’s; call it an old islander’s habit and indulge me.”

“I kissed her,” he said. “I went out past the tide line, and I waited until she put down her comb, and I put my arms around her and I kissed her.”

“Did you?” I said.

“She hit me for it,” he said, trying to sound sheepish. “Right in the jaw.” Which isn’t a very smart place to hit a man—hurts like hitting another fist.

“What did you do then?” I asked.

“I apologized,” he said. “Then I stole her comb.” So I added theft to his list of offenses.

“You’ll keep the priest busy, at least, if not yourself,” I said.

He went on to say that she had begged for the return of the comb, which he showed me; its teeth were an evil gray-green color and I misliked it. She had jumped into the water and raged at him, and told him that to lose her comb was a great shame, and that she could not return to her accursed people who lived underneath the waves without it. Johnnie’s answer to that was that she should not return to them, but come home and live with him (that it was not his home to offer but mine had presumably not troubled him). “For,” said he, “there is no point in ever trying to love someone else now.”

“No point at all,” I agreed.

But she would not come home with him, which showed she had some sense, and said she could not abide our black rain or smoky huts, the snow in winter, and the hot sun in summer, and told him to come with her instead.

“Which you did not do,” I said.

“Which I did not do,” he said. “I told her my home was not a hut, but had several rooms in it, and land and sheep besides, and that I had also a boat, a hand-mirror, a big bed, and some cash in the mattress, and that I would give her anything else she wanted. But she would not come with me.”

She called herself Gem-de-Lovely, which was the stupidest name I had ever yet heard, and she countered his offer with the promise of a white palace built under the caves in the sea, and freedom from both sunshine and wind, and all sorts of creatures he had never seen but might have dominion over—if he would come with her and let her drown him and be her man. She would have had the right to drown him, either for the unlawful taking of her comb, or for the unlawful taking of a kiss. My son was not quite so stupid as to agree to that, but he was stupid enough to sit on that rock for another hour and stare at her, and let her stare at him, and they both loved each other all the more for the looking. He was a very good-looking man.

Eventually, I suppose she did tire of just looking at him, even as handsome as he was, and she swam farther out, crying, “Alas, alas, my lovely comb. Alas, alas, my lovely man,” and then she was gone.

“So now I want you to help me catch her,” he said.

“It would be a wicked catching,” I said to him, “and the keeping of her more wicked still.” But he did not mind. “If you take an unbaptized wife, I cannot help you, whatever comes after.” But he did not mind that either.

* * *

He kept the comb in his room, and went about his work in a daze, and he would not speak to any of the local girls who used to keep him from his labors. The next week he came into my study as I was going over the accounts and began to speak without leave.

“I saw her again last night,” he said. “Gem-de-Lovely. She was sitting at the foot of my bed.”

“I congratulate you,” I said. “She has caught herself for you, and you have no need of my help.”

“She was a vision,” he said, as if I had not spoken at all. “The most beautiful creature anyone has ever seen—you will agree on this, if nothing else, when you see her—and she loves me. She was so beautiful I thought she might be an angel.”

“Did you pray, when you thought you had seen one?”

“I tried to,” he said. “I tried to offer up a prayer of thanks, but I found that I could not. I had forgotten every prayer I had ever learned.”

As the one who had taught him every prayer he ever knew, I did not especially like that. “Can you remember one now?”

“I will,” he said. “I will pray every morning and evening, once I have her.”

“One prayer now would be better than a hundred tomorrow,” I said.

“You are likely right,” he said, “but you are also interrupting my story. She came back to ask me to return her comb, which I had under my pillow, and which I could not give her. For if she does not marry me, I will die, and I wish to be buried with it. Then she asked, if I would not return the comb, if I would not change my mind and live with her under the sea, and I told her I could not, but begged her to visit my grave when I perished from the wanting of her.”

“You two are never at a loss for conversation, at least,” I said.

“Then,” he continued, “she made me a new offer.”

I put down my pen. “Did she,” I said.

“She did,” he said. “A fair one, too. She said she loved me, and that she would be my wife and live here with me for seven years, if I would swear to come to her palace under the sea with all that was mine at the end of them.”

“Naturally, you agreed.”

Johnnie smiled. He was terribly beautiful when he smiled, and I loved to see him do it. “I threw myself down on my knees, and I promised all that and more.”

* * *

So that was settled, then. That same week they were married. She let the priest do it, which surprised me. I would not have thought she would be able to stand in the church and hear a bible spoken over her. But she was made of strong stuff, and smiled at everyone, and only shivered a little when the priest made the sign of the cross over her. The two of them together were as lovely as the sun over the sea. Pearls as big as fists studded her hair.

And so for seven years she lived with my Johnnie as his wife—lived with us as Johnnie’s wife. I said nothing, as it was a lawful marriage, but cataloged their sins and watched my son’s beautiful face for signs of repentance, and watched his wife’s beautiful face for signs of pity. And things went well, as long as she was with us. The fish ran as they hadn’t in years, the sheep got fat, a man from the government came out and installed a wind turbine at the end of the grazing field, the grocer got her checks on time. Gem-de-Lovely did not work, and neither did Johnnie, and so the additional labor fell on me. I found their chores came as easily to me as my own; I have never minded work. Some in the neighborhood might fault me for the sin of omission—might say I had the opportunity to tear up wickedness by the root and did not act—but I say I gave them both seven years’ opportunity to choose grace. That they did not seek it was a great grief to me.

They had six children, all healthy, all carrying their parents’ promise of beauty. Johnnie kept the gray-green comb on the mantelpiece over the fireplace in the kitchen, and often I would catch him staring at it. I suppose sometimes I stared at it, too.

So the seven years came to an end, and Johnnie had not repented of his ill-gotten wife, nor of his heretical promise, and she was still determined to drown him. A faraway look came to her beautiful eyes, and she was ever smiling and looking out the window toward the sea. Johnnie took to varnishing the fishing boat down by the slip, the first honest work I’d seen from him in years. Some afternoons he took the children with him, and sailed out and around the bay. He always had at least the decency to look sheepish after those trips.

Seven years on God’s soil, and after that a brief, drowned life with a flooded, faithless people, with no hope of salvation or eternity thereafter; this was the bargain Johnnie thought fair, and meant to give his children as inheritance besides. He was ever careless with his own soul, but now he grew careless with theirs. I had baptized the children each myself in secret after they had been born, although I suspect I always knew that would not do much good when the time came. I had baptized Johnnie too, for all the good it had done him.

On the last night of their marriage, I arose from my bed and fashioned a little cross out of old radio coils. I buried it in the embers of the kitchen fire until it glowed red, and I went into the children’s room and pulled back the covers from their beds. I pressed the cross between each of their shoulder blades in turn, oldest to youngest. Had they been awake, they likely would have screeched like anything, but I had put enough Veronal in their milk at supper that they would not have stirred if the world were ending. There would be enough time for screaming in the morning, if they thought it would help ease the pain. If Johnnie was determined to be drowned, that was his affair, but he would not drag six little souls with him, to grow up in dark and dripping sea caves with a thief for a father and a murderer for a mother.

I’d given Johnnie the Veronal too, and he lolled back and forth as I tied his hands and feet. Our family has always raised sheep; branding and binding were not new to me. It was a heavy thing, to carry my son out to the boat and put him in it. He was the only son I ever had, and he was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, even now. I had not bothered to drug Gem-de-Lovely. I grabbed the fire iron from the hearth and thrust the point into the hollow of her collarbone. She woke up choking on her throat’s blood and glaring furiously at me.

“Come with me,” I told her, and kept her in front of me as we went down the stairs. She clutched at her bleeding neck with one hand and tried to open the door to the children’s room with the other. I had thought of that, too; the door was covered in dozens more of the wire crosses I had made. She shook her head and wept. I prodded her in the small of the back and walked with her toward the little boat tied up at the launch.

“Your man is waiting for you,” I said. “Get in the boat.”

“Give me my children,” she said.

“You are lucky I have not cut off all the hair on your head,” I said. “Trouble me again and I will; I have scissors in my pocket.”

“Give me my children,” she said, falling to her knees in the sand and clasping my feet.

“Your bargain was never with them,” I said. “You will have Johnnie, and you will have your comb, and you will go home, and I will call that fair.”

“Alas, alas, for my fine children!” she cried. “Alas, that I must leave them to live and die on dry land!”

Well, she would have gone on like that for who knows how long if no one had stopped her, so I jabbed her with the fire iron. “Get in the boat,” I said. She snapped her mouth closed and stared at me instead. Then I jabbed her again, once in the leg and once in the side, and she must not have liked that so well, because she shook her head something fierce at me. But she also started walking back toward the sea. She had gray blood like a squid, and it pulsed all over her dress as she swung her leg over the side and stepped into the boat.

So I had them both in the boat then, Gem-de-Lovely, who was wicked, and Johnnie Croy, who was stupid, and upstairs sleeping all six of their children, safe and whole. Johnnie lay quietly on the floor of the boat. I think he was awake then. His mouth hung a little open and he did not look at me, nor move or speak. The woman looked at me still, and so I looked back at her, and would for as long as she remained in sight. I took her comb out of my pocket and set it down next to her.

“Woman,” I said, “I never liked you.” I jabbed the fire iron through the side of her neck, piercing the pulse. It seemed like enough to kill her, although of course one never knows with creatures. It was just as likely that as soon as she touched seawater, all her wounds would close over like a starfish, and she’d sprout new and harder skin, and new and longer limbs.

“And I,” she said to me, glaring as hard as she could (if she’d had a fire iron then herself, I’d have been in terrible trouble), “I have never liked you, nor ever will.” Her mouth was full of that gray blood, and it dripped down her chin as she talked.

“A whip for a horse,” I said, “a bridle for a donkey, and a rod for the back of fools.” I don’t know why I warned her next, but I did. “I’m going to speak a bible over you now,” I told her. “Brace yourself.”

She lifted a hand and tried to smile. “At present, I can do little more than listen and bleed.” Well, that suited me fine, too. I don’t know why I felt like she deserved a warning now. I certainly hadn’t spared her much. But I’ll take credit for a little mercy, if anyone sees fit to add it to my glory. I made the cross over her first, then him. They both shuddered under the sign of it.

“Lord God,” I said, “you gathered all the oceans into a single place; at your command the waters dry up and the rivers disappear. You have set up the shore as the boundary of the sea; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, and though they roar, they cannot pass over it. We commit the earthly remains of my son, Johnnie, to the deep, and we commit this woman, too. Grant them a sure sinking, and a final baptism, and do not let them pass back over the shore, not even when the sea gives up her dead in the final resurrection.”

I knelt down at the side of the boat next to my son, who would not look at me, and I stroked his hair. “You should never have taken her comb,” I said to him.

The book of Matthew, chapter eighteen: Jesus said to the disciples, “Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. Better that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of those little ones.” Well, I know my scripture, and I know what offends me, and I knew which man by whom the offense had come.

“If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off,” I said to Johnnie, “and cast them from thee: it is better to enter into life halted or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. Johnnie, thine eye has offended thee.”

Well. He didn’t like that, but he could hardly disagree with it either. He would have taken those children with him. I call that offense to little ones, and I had my knife, so I used it. “Tell me which one you wish to keep, and I’ll spare it,” I said to him. He didn’t want to answer me, so I waited. “I have saved you from the worst of sins,” I said. “Let me help a bit more, and do not make me send my only son full-blind to his death in the sea.” He waited another minute, then jerked his head to the right, and I thanked him.

As he had used it for theft and unlawful gain, and lusts of the flesh, and shirking his duty—as he would have used it to take his children to drown with him—I cut off the left hand of Johnnie Croy. As he had used it to look too long in the wrong direction, I cut out his left eye, too.

But as he had not taken the children, I left him his right hand and the right eye in his head. The rest I threw into the sea. All the while he said nothing, only groaned, while his wife bled and glared beside him. When it was finished, he turned his face from me, and rested his head on his good arm, and seemed to fall back asleep.

Then I shoved the boat with my foot and watched it float out across the water for a long time. After a while I could no longer see the woman’s face, although I have no doubt it was still turned toward me. She watched me, I think, for as long as she could. She may have tried to speak her own bible back at me, or she may have only gurgled. I don’t know. I did not hear her again. Eventually the sun came up. I took my fire iron and I went home to raise up those six children. My son Johnnie was very beautiful, and I loved him.