Good Dirt

Monster

Monster

I t was the shouting that drew Willis out of his hiding place.

For three nights and four days, Willis had kept himself squeezed into a dark space in the ship’s cargo hold, knees folded against his chest behind rows of sealed jugs and barrels, his back leaning against Moses’s jar. The containers in the hold were stacked in such a way as to avoid being rolled or spilled whenever the ship rocked. These goods seemed to require no particular attention, but closer to the entrance there were piles of ropes and what looked like bolts of sailcloth, along with other items whose purpose Willis could not determine. It was this collection of items that, on occasion, would draw a seaman into the room.

The first time someone stepped inside to lift a bulky metal object from near the door, Willis’s chest felt as though it would collapse from the fear. He closed his eyes, stilled his breathing, and told himself that there was nothing he could do about it now. He had made the decision to run and now he was trapped on a square-rigger headed north. If they found him, so be it. Willis pictured Betsey on the day she’d died. He remembered the loss of his sister Flora, bitten by that snake because she’d been tired to the point of carelessness. He recalled being whipped as a child solely for making designs in the blank pages of a ledger he’d found in the master’s office. If it came down to it, he would jump from the deck of the ship rather than return to bondage.

At first, Willis did not touch the food he had hidden in the jar, so roiled was his stomach from the rocking of the ship. When his appetite returned, he would reach his hand down through the top layer of beans and feel around for a strip of dried meat, a pecan, or Old Joe’s green glass bottle, which he had filled with river water. Otherwise, he urged himself to sit immobile, even when a rat jumped over his shoes. Even when he felt like retching at the tipping of the ship’s floor. Even when he needed to piss.

Willis would hold his water all day and sneak onto the deck to relieve himself in the middle of the night, careful to stay out of sight of the single watchman on duty. The sky out there was like nothing Willis had ever seen. Even in his fright, he would stop to gaze up at the points of light that blazed above and gulp at the air that stirred along the length of the ship.

Willis looked out over the sea, its inky waves visible in the moonlight, and thought of the Scriptures. He imagined the Spirit of God as described in the book of Genesis, hovering over the waters as He brought forth light and land. This must be something like the world that God had generated in those first few days, Willis thought, before He created man to rule over the other creatures of the earth and sea. Before everything went wrong.

Surely this was the world that God had intended, for the place Willis had come from was not.

By now, Willis’s escape from the pottery would have been noted and reported. There would be signs posted on trees and outside shops. Logic told him he could not make the whole trip without being found, but he knew that others had done it. Other men had escaped by sea and sent word to the backcountry through coded messages. After those first few days, he had begun to feel that he might have a real chance. That is, until the shouting started.

Willis thought the ship was going down or about to run aground. It was known that a nasty gale up north could wash a dozen ships ashore in a day. He stood up and approached the doorway to the deck.

“Starboard!” a sailor cried.

Willis pulled open the door just enough to peer through at the men who ran past him.

“Whoa!” shouted another man. “What a monster!”

Monster? Willis opened the door just a bit farther, and what he saw pulled him fully out onto the deck. A spray of water shooting straight out of the sea. Mesmerized, he ran toward the bow. He had heard stories of this sort of thing. He had seen an illustration on a map posted on a board at the docks and, still, he could not believe his eyes. He watched as a gray-black creature leaped out of the water and twisted itself in the air, its body the size of a large boat, its hide covered in cuts and crusts.

A whale!

The splash that followed doused Willis with salt water. It was a fearsome thing, to be sure, to be so close to that big fish. The other men were still shouting, eager to avoid a collision with the creature. Willis felt the ship heel outward as it turned away from the whale. But this was no monster. Willis had lived among monsters. Willis was running from monsters. No, this was one of God’s creatures. Like those stars at night, this was the world that God had intended. This was the world as it was meant to be.

The whale was larger than any animal Willis had ever seen. As it flipped over and back into the depths of the sea, another of its kind came along, breaching the water like the first and seeming to stand up among the waves. Willis ran to the side railing and looked toward the stern, now, tears flowing down his face.

“Oh!” the other men shouted in unison, laughing now and pointing. Willis wiped at his eyes.

Distracted from his bleak circumstances by this spectacle, Willis had not seen two men approaching him.

“Who in blazes are you?” one of them said. Willis looked up to find two Negro seamen facing him, hands on their hips. For one moment, he had forgotten that he was a stowaway.

“Who are you, I say!” He grabbed Willis by the shirt and punched him, threatening him in a foreign-sounding accent. Later, several of the men would question Willis thoroughly and, too frightened to lie, he would tell them the truth.

“Don’t send me back,” Willis cried. “Please don’t send me back. I can work. I can repair wood and metal. I’m good with paint. I can make designs.” And then, in his boldest statement yet, he said, “I know my letters.” The seafarers looked at one another.

That night, still in the hold, but now furnished with some old rags to rest his head, he pulled a piece of paper out of the jar, laid it on the floor of the ship, and drew a whale. One of the seamen had told him that whales were not like other fish. They laid no eggs. They bore their young directly out of their bodies. Like cattle. Like people.

The same mate had told him about small fish that flew over the surface of the water, south of where Willis had grown up, in the seas beyond Florida. They flew like birds scouting for food, only much faster, as if propelled by a feeling of pure happiness. This new awareness of the immensity and mysteries of the sea and its creatures was daunting and energizing at the same time. It made Willis feel alive.

It made Willis feel free.

Willis felt this way even when the mariners shared stories of great sadness. Of losses and disappointments. To tell your story was to experience a kind of freedom. To be able to share news of your adventures, to name your relations and favorite places, was to be a man.