The King's Indian by John Gardner

Author:John Gardner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2010-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

Book Three

THE

KING’S INDIAN

A Tale

I

“Hoaxes! Don’t speak to me of hoaxes, sir! I was part of the worst that was ever dreamt up in all history, and not free of it yet. Two old gnomes from Nantucket, some years ago … Gnomes. Hah! Cracked checker-players, that’s nearer the mark! Beelzebub and Jaweh! Never mind … interminable damned … Hoaxes. Hah.”

He hunches up, cunning, a crafty old loon with his left eye cocked to the northwest corner of the universe. He is teased toward some barest possibility. He purses his lips. He looks both sly and apprehensive. His long, lean nose is the cutting edge of outlandishness.

“I could tell you a tale, if ye’d understand from the outset it has no purpose to it, no shape or form or discipline but the tucket and boom of its highflown language and whatever dim flickers that noise stirs up in yer cerebrium, sir—the boom and the bottle we chase it with— fierce rum of everlasting sleep, ha ha!—for I won’t be called a liar, no sir! not when I speak of such matters as devils and angels and the making of man, which is my subject, sir.”

With dignity, an angel enters, golden-winged, and places spirits on the table between the mariner and his guest (apparently a city fellow). The guest uncomfortably picks his lip. Except for the angel, the mariner’s voice, and the guest’s self-conscious ear, the room is empty; yellow. The guest is as yet only half-aware of the angel’s wings. Blushing slightly, uncertain who is supposed to pay, the guest glances over his shoulder, adjusts his tie.

“ ‘Tell on, old loon!’ yer supposed to say.”

“Tell on,” says the guest.

“God bless yer generous soul, sir, that I will!”

II

Says he:

“There never was a nobler sight in the world, nor like to be, I incline to think, than a brig in full sail out of some far-off foreign or American port, riding in a wind that knows its business, neither blustering like a fool nor slacking off. (Take a drop of the whiskey, sir.) And there never was a nobler sensation, God knows, than riding in the rigging of such a ship, the decks all gleaming with varnish below you, and the smell of unlimited futurity stinging your nosedrills. I’d aspired for years to such a ride, but always one thing had deterred me from it. I’m not a good man for taking orders or letting my soul be boxed in, so to speak. I never was good at it from the day I was born—an event I remember, believe it or not, with some clarity. I felt pain in my head, and then immediately a sensation of drowning, and I clawed and screamed, not from pain so much, though the pain was titanic, as from outrage and moral indignation. In time I came to forgive my parents for the inconvenience they’d afforded me, but be damned if I’d ever let another man take a similar advantage. Say all you like on ‘Ain’t all men slaves, either physical or metaphysical?’—myself, I like to preserve split-hair distinctions.

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