For M.S.
Lo and behold, in my great move across this wonderful country, did I meet the one, the only, the original Sawyer. And he told me a tale so fabulous, so astonishing, so utterly unique that I had to share it forthwith. And backwith.
The Other, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without end of season sails, and was at rest. The Director of the Company was our spirit guide, sundial engineer and host of ceremonies, as well as shroud monies. It was difficult to realize his work was behind him (he was so thin!), within the artfully-photographed gloom.
The old river in its broad reach had known captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of raw microbe-infused sushi!
"And this also," said Sawyer suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth." (He'd traded his lighter for a 'magic' jar of peanut butter.)
Thus began his tale, with "a dead silence, grass sprouting right and left, a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert. Two women, one a two-dollar crack whore and the other hot as a 900-number ad girl, sat on flotation-cushion chairs, knitting what looked like black wool. There was something ominous in the atmosphere, as all the men were bald, and were led by their short hairs. The 900-number girl seemed to know all about me, uncanny and fateful, guarding the door of Darkness. Evie! Morituri te salutant. There was a visit to the doctor. `Ever any madness in your family?' he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone, putting away one Scotch after another. 'Good-bye. Adieu. In the tropics one must before everything hold one's liquor.'
"I left in a French-Canadian steamer, and she called in every blamed port they have out there. The edge of a colossal island, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf (Jan & Dean), along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creep that played misty for me. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with sarcasm. We pounded along, stopped, landed fishermen. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf; they were just flung out there, in the riptide, without finishing a Red Cross lifeguard badge. But we got to a beach. `There's the Company's station,' said the Director, pointing to three sunken hatch-like structures in the rocky valley.
"Black shapes crouched, lay, clinging to the earth, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and delusions of competence. They were nothing earthly now-- nothing but black shadows of disease and advanced starbucks' wiithdrawal, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of prime time contracts, lost in uncongenial netlets, fed on unfamiliar fanbases, they sickened, jumped the proverbial shark, and were then allowed to crawl away and die slowly in syndication.
"When near the buildings I met a middle-aged white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision, a walking corpse with an eternal supply of Maker's Mark and newly-minted Keds. I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's chief surgeon, accountant and barstool philosopher. One day he remarked, `In the interior you will no doubt meet Captain Gorton. He is a very remarkable person.'
"The word `fish sticks' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. By Jove! And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, or the violent sacrifice of redshirts to the gods of ratings.
"One of the men, a first-class agent, asked me to his room, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had a collection of spears, assegais, shields, knives and hairbrushes hung up as trophies. But I sensed his real desire to get appointed to a parcel post where fish sticks were to be shipped.
"`Tell me, pray,' said I, `who is this Captain Gorton?'
"'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. `He is an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil knows what other white meat. We want higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a single net of porpoise; and so he comes here, a special being (or three-bean special). ' I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there are investors in planet Hollywood. Gorton at the time was just a word for me. It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream . . . ."
He was silent for a while.
"We live, as we steam, broil or bake--alone. . . ."
"Two agents below me strolled back and forth. I heard: 'Company post--doctor--two hundred miles-- nine months--no news--strange rumors.' One lifted his head. `You have been well this time?' he asked. 'Who? I? Like a charm! But the rest--all sick. They die so quick, too-- it's incredible!' (The first reminded him that shooting them hastened their demise.)
"We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth (but not one with dinosaurs, because they don't exist), on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet (but not an alien planet, because that would be lame). We were too far (but not all the way to the north pole, because that would defy logic),and were travelling in the night of first ages (but not mythological times, because that would be unoriginal), of those ages that are gone (not actually travelling back in time, because that creates too many paradoxes), leaving hardly a sign (although lots of symbols, because those are cool)-- and no memories (except for flashbacks, because they move the plot ahead in a nonlinear way).
"The approach to this Gorton grubbing for fish sticks in the wretched bush was beset by dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle. I was looking down at the sounding-pole, when suddenly little sticks, not of the marine variety, were flying about: arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at! The poleman rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; his hands clutched the shaft of a spear that had caught him in the side, just below the gills, er, ribs.
"'By Jove! it's all over. We are too late; he has vanished'--and my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, as though I had been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life, or forfeited my right to beer-batter prawns forever . . . .'
Sawyer's lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and dropped eyelids.
"Of course I was wrong. The wilderness had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devil's food initiation (rich and chocolatey). Fish sticks? I should think so. Heaps of them, stacks of them. The old caves were bursting with them. You would think there was not a single fillet left either above or below sea level in the whole ocean. You should have heard him say,`My Intended, my fish sticks, my processing plant, my tartar sauce, my--' everything belonged to him. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land-- I mean literally. This initialled and well-branded wraith from the back of a cardboard carton honored me with its amazing confidence before it vanished into the recycle bin. All Europe contributed to the making of Gorton; the International Society for the Suppression of Lavish Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report decrying gourmet seafood, vibrating with eloquence, before his--let us say--nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites (trout boils and the terrifying bass-o-matic). The peroration gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence (and it wasn't even July!). It made me tingle with enthusiasm.
"The manager stood by the wheel when I saw in the distance yet another white man under a hat, as cheerful as you please. 'Come along. It's all right.' 'Why did they attack us?' I pursued. He said shamefacedly, 'They don't want him to go.' He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom. `I tell you,' he cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.'" (And certainly the size of his hat betrayed a skull 3 times its normal size).
"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him unscaled and on ice. 'We talked of everything,' he said, quite transported at the recollection. 'I forgot there was such a thing as sleep. Night-long deboning sessions did not seem to last an hour. Everything! Everything! . . . Of love, too.' 'Ah, he talked to you of love!' I said, much amused. 'It isn't what you think,' he cried, almost passionately. 'He made me see things--things.'
"As a rule Gorton wandered alone, far in the depths of the sea; it was dangerous to inquire too much--but mostly his expeditions had been for fish sticks. 'But he had no goods to trade with by that time,' I objected. 'There's a good lot of cartridges left even yet,' he answered, looking away. 'Gorton got the tribe to follow him, did he?' He fidgeted like a moray eel. 'They adored him,' he said. The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his emotions. 'What can you expect?' he burst out; 'You can't judge Captain Gorton as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! He was a whale among tadpoles! He wanted to shoot me, too, but I don't judge him.' 'Shoot you!' I cried 'What for?' 'Unless I gave him my fish sticks, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased. And he said I always overcooked the shrimp. But I couldn't leave him.
"'Why! he's mad,' I said. He protested indignantly. I directed my glass to the house, where I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation. Now I had suddenly a nearer view; heads on the stakes, their faces turned to the house. The wilderness had found Gorton out early, and had whispered to him things about himself, and the whisper echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core, an exoskeleton deveined and sauted in a fine Bernaise sauce. . . .
"I don't want to know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Captain Gorton,' I shouted. I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle, unrefrigerated horrors. The young man looked at me with surprise. 'You don't know how such a life tries a man like Gorton,' cried Gorton's last disciple. 'He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this, who could reform the entire frozen food industry! Who single-handedly commanded scores of minions, and schools of minnows! Who could soar with the eagles and blubber with the whales! Shamefully! Shamefully!'
"Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp barb flying straight to the very Heart of the Matter (no, sorry, that's another tortured -soul-lostinwilderness-searching-for-redemption British classic); and, as if by enchantment, streams of naked human beings with spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild innuendos and savagely-cutting remarks, were poured into the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest. I saw the man on the stretcher sit up, and the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head that nodded with grotesque jerks and a flaky white flesh that needed no marination. I saw him open his mouth wide--it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him! (But it was only a bit of indigestion, and it passed.)
"The volume of tone he emitted without effort amazed me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating; 'Save me!--save the fish sticks, you mean. Never mind --I will return. I saved all my receipts!. . . .'
"The manager came out. 'I don't deny there is a remarkable quantity of fish sticks--but the method is unsound.' 'Nevertheless I think Captain Gorton is a remarkable man,' I said with emphasis. I found myself lumped along with Gorton (and I always thought of myself as choice crab, never flaked): I was unsound! Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares. And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast meat locker full of unspeakable secrets and day-old dinner rolls. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable warehouse freezer. . . .
'It was Gorton who had ordered the attack to be made on the steamer. I could not stop him,' the disciple informed me. 'Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetry! Itsy bitsy spider, climbs up the water spout. Down comes the rain and destroys mankind in one bout!' He rolled his squid-blackeyes at the recollection of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my mind!' (Hallucinogenic serum no doubt, miled from the spines of blowfish kept alive for the soul purpose of capturing man's sole).
"Deep within the forest, red gleams showed the exact position of the camp where Captain Gorton's adorers were keeping their uneasy vigil. A steady droning sound of many men chanting each to himself some weird incantation came out from the woods as the theme song of an infernal fast food commercial that never ends, and I glanced casually into the little cabin. A light was burning within, but Captain Gorton was not there.
"It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice --and to this day I don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that old cajun recipe.
"I followed the fin-like trail until I came upon him, and he rose, unsteady, long, pale, indistinct, like a vapour exhaled by a flatulent seal. 'Go away--hide yourself,' he said, in that profound tone. 'You will be lost,' I said--'utterly lost.'
"'I was on the threshold of great things,' he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold and my taste buds quiver. I tried to break the spell of the wilderness that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions, and all you can eat surf n' turf luncheons. And, don't you see, the terror of the position was in this--his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. His intelligence was perfectly clear, but his soul was mad. And he smelled like rotting eel on the beach in august.
"When next day we left at noon, three men stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies and sang the Gorton's jingle; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic line-dance, complete with tambourines.
"'Do you understand this?' I asked. He kept on looking out past me with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. 'Do I not?' he said slowly, gasping, as if the words had been torn out of him by a supernatural power, or a salmon bone stuck in his throat. Gorton discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last crumb and pickled herring. It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart. And the delicate flavor of his poached soul.
"One morning he was lying on his back with closed eyes, and I heard him mutter, 'Live rightly, die, die . . .' (although he may have been talking about the no. 2 yellow the FDA made him remove from the patented Gorton formula).
"His was an impenetrable darkness. Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. It was as though a veil had been rent (or rented for the occasion; I never did believe that was his real hair). I saw on that fish sticks face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless dermatitis. He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
"'The hor d'oeuvre! The hor d'oeuvre!'
Sawyer ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Budweiser frog. A black bank of clouds--and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth-- seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness, or at least a supermarket bereft of haddock and cod; a beached whale in winter, a hermit crab without a shell, to shake 'n bake no more.
Reference: The Award-Winning Captain Gorton Theory