The Master Of Monterey: A Novel

Chapter the Fifth

Chapter the Fifth After he finished copying Waxdeck's latest pages for the Commodore to take up to the quarterdeck and read aloud while holding a hand over his heart and gazing at the endless horizon, Hannibal Memory took over a corner of the cabin to begin his own poetic insubordination, to oppose the official bard, to trouble the entrance of California into that history. Although he knew he couldn't contend with forty-four cannon , he could contend with imagination and words. Waxdeck had begun to give Hannibal some instruction in poetics when the steward picked up new cantos to copy, and he told him that the heroic couplet was the form that in English best approximated the quantitative verse found in Greek and Latin epic forms. For instance, Waxdeck said, consider Pope's translation of the Iliad. Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful Spring Of Woe's unnumber'd, heavenly Goddess, sing! That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy Reign The Souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain. His own beginning, he said humbly, had aspired to emulate the great cripple. +~ 49 -<+ That restless hero who with mighty Hand Brought his BIG SHIP to moor in Virgin land That Brave one who with ardent Martial toil Did plant our FLAG into the Yielding Soil That Jones who brought to California sBreast The blessings of our Destiny Man'fest who casts out tyrants, to VACANT land would bring Democracy and Freedom, Goddess, sing! Hannibal pondered the magical form of the heroic couplet, which gave such power to words on a page. The beats of Waxdeck's pentameter sounded on the inside of his skull, and as he sat down with an empty piece of paper and a full bowl of potatoes and pork in front of him, it seemed as though he had no choice but to write in the same meter. Besides, if his narrative were to wrest power from Waxdeck's, perhaps it needed to be in the same form. Hannibal ate several quick spoonfuls and began. Sing, 0 Gods, of that well-rounded man who brought his endless story to new lands who used the restless curve-back'd Commodore To ferry him beyond baleful HIST'RY'S shore who fled the National Intention sslavery For California's lush fecundity Who left the ship to sink without regret A new child and a new line to beget. +~ 50 -+ He studied what he had written, somehow dissatisfied. The words seemed very abstract, distant from what he had to relate. If he were really to mend his broken story, he would have to tell the death of his beloved on the Louisa Darling. But as he gnawed his pen and thought, the heroic couplets refused to come together and describe the terror and stench of hundreds of starving men and women chained below battened hatches while an overladen ship fought a storm. He looked hard at the paper, and the face of his beloved paled in his memory before the hard-edged presence of words. He also reflected that Waxdeck had begun earlier and had already worked the ship around Cape Horn and into the Pacific. He didn't know if he would ever catch up if he had to write in heroic couplets. The events and their meaning might already be fixed before he had even had a chance. The Commodore came belowdecks and found Hannibal tapping his fingers on the armchair while his portable writing desk rested on his lap scattered with different piles of paper. - More copying? the Commodore asked. -Aye, sir. - Good, good. The Commodore paused, and Hannibal was suddenly terrified that he might come over and see what he had just written. But the Commodore merely asked a question. - What do you think of Waxdeck's work, so far? Hannibal replied circumspectly that the epic poem was sure to add luster to the Commodore's career, and that while heroes needed poets to make their names famous, poets equally needed heroes about whom to write. The Commodore nodded and sighed. +~ 51 -<+ - You're a faithful man, Hannibal, he said. The Commodore sighed again and put his hand over his heart. - Louisa Darling. It makes my heart ache. - Mine also, sir. Hannibal melted in relief when the Commodore left. He decided then he would have to continue in expedient prose, as it would be the only way he could write rapidly enough to catch up with Waxdeck in the odd moments he would have free. Despite the fact that he was afraid that he too would participate in killing memory by writing history about what would happen in the future, he forged ahead to combat the epic in which his Louisa Darling would never sail. He ate while he wrote with prophetic force, and finished his food at the same time he finished the passage ... And while the National Intention carried Hannibal beyond the land ruled by history where he and his people were slaves, a screwworm began boring a hole deep in the bilges ofthe ship, so that it wouldfounder when it came upon the new place, and nevermore carry Hannibal back again, but rather leave him there to thrive with his memories again in force and his story to be continued into all the tomorrows ofthe world. When the ship anchored in the crystalline green waters off Honolulu, Commodore Jones found stories of war and a British squadron floating around the harbor. The Commodore was invited aboard the flagship of Rear Admiral Thomas, but he learned nothing. The Admiral, long seasoned in empire building, was amused by the Commodore's anxious desire to +~ 52 -<+ discover the truth concerning international relationships. The Admiral was convinced that the truth about international relationships depended mainly upon the number ofcannon aboard ship at anyone time. - My esteemed Commodore, he said. You're concerned about whether a state of war exists or does not exist between Mexico and your country, so that you can take the necessary action (which I won't presume to guess at). Yet let me pose the question, for you to consider: If you take the necessary action, won't a state of war then exist? - Perhaps, said the Commodore. - Perhaps, the Admiral smiled. Perhaps you are being overly nice about a mere question of temporality, whether the state of war exists a priori. The French are not so scrupulous. If La Perouse were here, he would tell you himself. - Are the French in the Pacific? the Commodore asked. - I've heard the French fleet just sailed from Valparaiso. Destination unknown. Hadn't you heard? The next day, the Admiral himself took his three ships out to sea, courteously saluting the American. He hadn't mentioned to the Commodore that he was sailing so soon, nor where he was sailing. Commodore Jones was in despair. He feared that he would find the flag of some other nation already flying in place of the Mexican flag in Monterey. Even though war was only rumored, he trembled to think of the Russians or the French or the English beating him to the prize. He followed the Admiral's fleet out to sea, but it had disappeared. The National Intention sailed north of the Sandwich Islands, +~ 53 -<~- into the band ofprevailing westerlies that would take it into the continent's west coast if the Commodore so ordered. It was local apparent noon, and the sun swung up to its highest point of the day while the Commodore paced restlessly on the poop deck, a thin, moving question mark surrounded by rumors. The first lieutenant waggled a sextant, taking the noon sighting for Captain Rafael Rafael. The ship's bow scared up a school of flying fish, which shot like silver stars across the ocean's choppy surface, pursued from below by tunny and from above by swooping frigate birds. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The Commodore thought of Louisa Darling, and he suddenly felt lonely, homesick for land he could name Darling Land. The first lieutenant stood before Captain Rafael Rafael and saluted. - Noon reported, sir. - Make it so, the Captain affirmed. Make it so, the Commodore repeated to himself. Make it so. - Captain Rafael, he said aloud. -Aye, sir. - Set course for Monterey. Do it now. While the National Intention squared sails and rode the wind with a bone in her teeth toward the coast of California, and the Commodore gazed at the line that divided sea from sky as though it were a seam that would yawn open and display a new land ready for the shape of his desire, Captain Rafael Rafael immediately stowed all the old charts they had brought along and determined to make landfall using only his own inner compass, since he was certain that the place he was seeking could not exist on a chart. He rolled up all the old flat parchments that showed California floating in different positions +~ 54 -<+ every century, and he swore he would have no new charts drawn up, fixing the land's position once and for all. He felt in his heart that if California were charted definitively, it would never be that place Pearl Prynne had told him about, a place he dreamed about where he could never arrive. He walked to the bows of his ship, looking for some sign that the Earth was inclining upwards, as old Columbus had thought of South America, looking for some sign that they were sailing toward that favored spot on the Earth that swelled up like a woman's breast to a nipple, closer to the heavens, looking for some sign of fresh water that spilled down from that place and sweetened the sea. A sign was not long in coming, though it was not the sign the Captain had wished for. The following day at dawn, young Jimmy F. Bush from the maintop spotted a long, black, loggish object floating thickly from the direction toward which they were sailing, strewn with seaweed and starred with limpets and barnacles. Young Jimmy always looked keenly to the west, because he hoped to see his father and mother waiting for him there, happy to have him with them once again. Then he saw the floating thing like a half-submerged island in the gray chopped waters, and he sang out: - Object sighted one point off the starboard bow! Captain Rafael Rafael changed course to bring the object alongside and ordered it to be brought aboard. The red-capped boatswain swung a grappling hook round in the chains and snagged the object with a perfect toss. The line was taken to a block and tackle, and seamen from the starboard watch began to heave away as the ship's sails shivered in the wind. +~ 55 -<~- A horse rose dark and dripping with salt water toward the yardarm, a dead stallion gutted through the rib cage by the treble hook, stiff as stone in death, its long masculinity standing out rigid in rigor mortis between its splayed legs. The horse twisted slowly below the block and tackle, its eyes closed as though still dreaming of running a herd of mares in season, as though the six-foot-long nerve that ran down its spine to its hindquarters were still vibrating with life. And the odor of earth still came subtly from traces of dirt clinging to its inner ears, just enough odor to make each man who hauled on the line sorry he had come to sea. Major McCormick, that man who never looked backward, drew his saber and shouted to Captain Rafael Rafael on the quarterdeck. - Shall we cut her loose, Captain, before she infects the ship? The Captain looked sadly at the horse and drew his hand down with a slashing motion. McCormick nodded and swiped at the line, but the ship took a roll to starboard and instead of cutting the line, he slashed off the horse's long, erect penis. Then the hook tore through the rest of the horse's rib cage, and the beast splashed into the sea with a gash over its heart and fell astern in the wake of the National Intention, seeping blood into the white wash of the water. The crew moaned in despair at the falling horse, and McCormick turned on them fiercely. - No moaning, do you hear? I thought we beat that out of you. Next man who moans loses his! Major McCormick was really concerned about how his dear +~ 56 -<~- boy Waxdeck would take the event. Although the Major was still illiterate, he was learning something about the great tradition from his talks with the bard of the voyage. The relationship between Patroclus and Achilles, for instance, and their oral tradition in the Greek heritage of warfare. And he knew something of the importance ofsigns and portents to Waxdeck, even though he didn't quite grasp how they were tied to later events. Yet Waxdeck had told him of the Roman general who had stumbled while disembarking from his ship in Africa, and how badly it might have turned out if the general had not turned a bad omen into a good omen by taking up fists full of sand and shouting: See, Africa, how your conqueror grasps you. McCormick sat beside the green-faced youth at the time of dogging the watches, as always, and he stroked his hand before telling him what had happened. Midshipman Waxdeck had still not been topside during the entire voyage, and had not seen a single thing that he was writing about. Yet he had no trouble at all reading the horse as a good omen. The horse might stand for the profligate nature of the Spanish dons who now controlled California but were not using the land to its full potential . Or it might stand for the backward system of government that currently held sway over the land, keeping the people in ignorance of the blessings of freedom and democracy. Waxdeck said he would have to see which interpretation was easiest to express in heroic couplets. Horse's Penis, for example , might rhyme with Warrior's Genius, almost. At any rate, Waxdeck assured his Major that he had struck a blow for either liberty or greater economic expansion. Hannibal Memory also wondered how to interpret the horse +~ 57 -<~- for his narrative of bringing generations to a land outside the history in which he and his people were slaves. The horse had been black, and McCormick's mighty blow had made him moan loudest of all. Hannibal wondered whether, if he just left the horse out of his narrative, it would disappear from his memory, and so not influence future events. He wasn't certain. But he knew that Waxdeck had taken the liberty of inventing certain good auguries at the ship's sailing, so he decided to take the liberty of leaving out an augury that he could not interpret, and he redoubled his narrative efforts to unleash the screwworm into the ship's wooden hull. As the National Intention sailed eastward, Captain Rafael Rafael spotted more horse corpses floating on the feminine emerald-green ocean. They were like a long curving line of buoys guiding him into Monterey without charts, but not the kind of guide he had thought would be waiting for him at the portals of Eden. He wondered what they meant, wondered whether the horses meant that in approaching his goal he was approaching death, and then wondered at his wondering. In the land he hoped to reach, signs shouldn't need interpretation. In fact, the horses were merely the latest expulsion from California. They multiplied quickly and took rangeland away from cattle, and the Californios determined to slaughter them. But they discovered that they didn't have enough bullets in the entire territory to kill the horses, and not enough shovels to dig a hole to bury them all. So they stampeded the wild horses over cliffs into the sea, which they did with great dispatch and skill, driving eight thousand three hundred and twenty-seven horses past the surf line. The horses thrashed the ocean white until +~ 58 -<+ they drowned, and then they floated out to sea. Some old men from the Ohlone tribe walked the beaches and pushed back out to sea the horses that washed ashore. They floated out like a long, beautiful finger pointing the way to the capital city of Monterey, and the Captain followed them. On the bright morning that the National Intention was climbing the last crest of ocean, which would bring landfall on California, the first screwworm was discovered by Chips the carpenter. Chips lived in the bilges. He was the only member of the crew who could hear the thick voice of the ocean crying at the wooden planks and not go insane thinking that only two inches of tree stood between them and the starry depths where monsters with eyes on the sides of their heads waited to kill them with their vision. Chips was a cave dweller, a troglodyte, with a long black beard rank with algae, and skin the color of mottled milk, and black eyes sunken under bushy brows. On top of his bald head was a plate of silver the size and shape of a butterfly, which replaced the part of his skull smashed away by a shattered oaken spar at the tail end of a forgotten engagement during the War of 1812. Chips oversaw the keel and the keelson, and the heavy lead weight that kept the ship in ballast. He preferred to speak with the rats and other lower forms of life that lived in the bilges than to speak with the yeoman and gunners and ship's officers who lived above him. Yet he spoke to the rats with great seriousness and conviction of the ship's mission and the role of the bilges in that mission, as a counterweight to the heavy masts and cannon. And that mission was to fight. He sang to the rats the song he had heard just before his ship joined combat. +~ 59 -<~- Hearts of oak are our ship Jolly tars are our men We are always ready, steady, boys, steady, To fight and to conquer again and again It was only when the ship was fighting that he truly felt happy. He never knew where the ship was sailing, or who it was fighting, or why. So long as the ship was fighting, he was content . - Fight, he told the rats, fight and conquer. Then he threw some biscuit down to the timbers and watched the rats fight amongst themselves. On that portentous morning, he found six inches of salt water tainted with horse blood in the bilge, and whole families of rats cowering along the ribs away from the keel. The rats were pointing with their noses at a single spot, so he took some tar-soaked oakum from his pockets and stuffed it down between the keel and the first plank. He mounted slowly up a ladder to the tween decks, still far from the open sky, and he prowled there until he found the boatswain coming down to break out pikes, cutlasses, and pistols from the yeoman's stores. - Leak, he told him. Man pumps. - All right there, Chips, the boatswain said as he hurried by. We'll get to it. While Chips stared stupidly after the boatswain, uncertain why he was being ignored, Jack Chase, that handsome sailor, called out from his dancing royal yard high above the chalk hill of the ocean in a voice known by the Phoenicians three millennia past. +~ 60 -<+ - Land ho! Land hoooooooo-oh! Commodore Jones, on the poop deck, raised his long glass to his right eye and stared dead ahead. - Sail on, he cried. And clear the gun decks. California heaved up over the horizon in awful fecundity and guided the ship in with horse bodies issuing forth from Monterey, the capital of Alta California and cornerstone of Mexican control of the territory. Monterey was a pile of lumpy white buildings with red-tile roofs, haphazardly spread out on a green plain like seeds on a loaf of bread. The buildings generally followed a curving cart path between the Custom House, perched above the rocky landing beach, and the Presidio, squatting nearer the forest edge. Every building there was made from adobe bricks, baked out ofclay soil mixed with straw, then whitewashed to keep the bricks from sinking back into the earth. After the winter rains, all the inhabitants inspected their houses to see how much had melted away. The Presidio was a squarish fort of cracking adobe walls with circular blockhouses on the two corners facing the sea. It was kept up with government funds, and therefore it was the most decrepit building on the green. The native Ohlones in the nearby rancherfas had the good sense to live in huts made of sticks covered with bulrushes and grasses. When one of their dwellings began to sink into the earth, they simply burned it down and built a new one. They didn't depend on the government to maintain their buildings. Chips went below to see if the water level had increased, Captain Rafael Rafael piloted the National Intention along the horse corpse buoys, and Commodore Jones scanned Monterey +~ 61 -<~- with his long glass, fearing to find the French fleet that had left Valparaiso, or the English fleet from Callao. He found only two small Mexican trading vessels, the Paz y Religion and the Don Quijote riding quietly at anchor. The tricolor Mexican flag was still hanging limply above the Custom House and the Presidio. He looked for signs of the war between Mexico and the United States, signs that would make all the stories true and all the omens and auguries invented by Waxdeck inevitably and unquestionably right. He saw a small battery of cannon behind a breastworks on a hill separate from the Presidio, which could fire upon the anchorage, but unfortunately nobody was there aiming a cannon at him. He turned the glass on the Presidio, and with joy in his heart he saw two lines of mounted horsemen, like two processions, making for the Presidio's front gate. He handed the glass to Captain Rafael Rafael. - Look there, he said. They're bringing reinforcements to the fort. The Captain saw the same two lines of horses proceeding to the Presidio, but he saw differently than the Commodore did. At the head of one of the processions, he saw with sudden clarity a woman with tears in her heart and a thin chain of gold around her neck, and upon seeing her he felt that any number of dead horses he'd had to follow to get here had been worthwhile . He did not mention this to the Commodore, only agreeing that they were reinforcements. The Commodore ordered two boatloads of marines to row to the trading vessels and inform them that they were prizes of war. Then, as the National +~ 62 -<+ Intention rounded into harbor, he ordered a single cannon readied to fire a warning shot. They backed sails to slow the ship, steadied the helm, and Hannibal gave out his parabolic shout. - For Freedom! From Louisa Darling! - Fire! coughed the Commodore. With a shot not heard round the world, a single cannonball flew from a United States man-of-war into the unfailingly blue Azdan sky and plummeted down toward the soil of California. Chips, down in the bilges, looked up suddenly from the rising water and groaned in satisfaction at the cannon's sound. Jack Chase, high up on the maintop, laughed at the hundredth invasion of his endless career in the navies of the world. The yeoman Keyes fretted at the use of powder and wondered if they would be able to get the cannonball back in good condition. Down in the tween decks, Major McCormick stroked William Waxdeck's greenish forehead while the youth began to compose a verse describing the flight of the cannonball- the arc up to its apex, he decided, would symbolize American arms and aims triumphant, while the arc down to its impact would symbolize Mexican interests defeated. As the sound of the shot reverberated and the cannonball fell, Captain Rafael Rafael tried to focus in again on the woman at the head of the procession with the long glass at full extension. In the moment before the cannonball struck, Hannibal wondered whether it would bury itself like a seed, the first seed of his story to be planted in this land. Commodore Jones had a moment of misgiving as he realized that he had gone to war on the basis of stories of war. Now that the story was willy-nilly about to become fact, he +~ 63 -<~- hoped for the good of his career that American and Mexican troops were already slaughtering each other in Texas. The shot cracked into the main gate of the Presidio with the precision of destiny and crumpled the wooden doors as a hundred generations of winged termites and grubs panicked into the air. The horses in the processions reared up, and both lines turned and galloped in opposite directions away from the fort. Commodore Jones was stunned. Every rule of war told him that they should rush into the fort to defend it, but he didn't realize as the residents of Monterey did that the decrepit Presidio was the least safe place to be in case ofattack, and that its main strength lay in the enemy's ignorance of how weak it was. The Commodore took the long glass with some difficulty from Captain Rafael Rafael and turned it on the broken gate. Two soldiers peered out through the shattered timbers, as though they were looking into the daylight for the first time since Christmas. No answering fire came from either the Presidio or the battery. Yet the Mexican flag still flew over the fort, undaunted. Commodore Jones was resolute. The two boatloads of marines had returned with reports that the captains there were content to be prizes of the great young democracy , which, so it was said, had a great respect for private property . Jones immediately called for McCormick to lead the marines onto shore under a flag of truce and fulfill the ends of the war. Waxdeck clutched at the Major's hand as the marine rose to his feet. - Go bravely, he said. Let honor be your guide. The Commodore instructed McCormick to negotiate carefully the surrender ofall the land of California, and the miner- +~ 64 -<+ als under the land, and the roots of plants growing in the land, and the animals that roamed on the land, and the trees that spread branches over the land, and the clouds that passed above the land, as well as the air, sunshine, and rain, including those parts of California that had never been seen and only existed in legend, tall tale, and hearsay. - Be skillful, the Commodore said. Use tactics. Parlay. - I can parlay well enough with my gun, sir, McCormick said. Commodore Jones knew he had chosen the right man for the job. He sent him off with orders to strike the Mexican flag and raise the Stars and Stripes in its place. And he gave him, for the sake of convenience, a newly amended Surrender Form. All that was necessary to complete the Articles of Capitulation was to fill in the dates, the name of the garrison, and the name of the governor and/or commandant general. Article four made provisions for repatriation of Mexican soldiers to Mexico now that the land they stood on was no longer named Mexico. Article one gave permission to the Mexican troops to play music as they marched out of the fort. And Article five guaranteed the right to personal security, property, and religious freedom, to all who agreed to consider themselves conquered. The form was in English, so Jones was certain it would be understood perfectly. The longboats crawled toward shore, many-legged, like waterbugs. Rifles pointed out between the oarsmen like spikes on a seedpod. The men aboard the National Intention watched in sudden silence as the boats rowed their way through the thick beds of kelp that wrinkled the water, through the schools +~ 65 -<+ of sardines that would one day give birth to Cannery Row, through the friendly nods of sea otters about to be hunted to the brink of extinction. The men watched the boats always going forward under McCormick's direction, toward the placid shore. The white buildings with red-tile roofs were asleep on the green plain, and two cows appeared on the ridge of the gun battery, chewing slowly and watching with great unconcern the boats plash through the water. The cows were brown and white with large liquid eyes, and frays of hay hung from their mouths. They were the most beautiful cows the men had ever seen. Then Chips emerged blinking from the leaking bilges into the open air, blood-tainted water soaking his calves, and he groaned incoherently from his tangled mouth at the sight of forested hills and green plain rising from the ocean around him. He scratched his face with his long nails until blood ran, closed his eyes and opened them, and then spoke with a desire for revenge on that peaceful sight that lay before him. - Fight, he said. Fight and conquer. The boats bumped against the shore, and marines gathered in good formation and marched up to the broken gate of the Presidio, and everything changed. +~ 66 -<+ ...