The Amalgamation Polka (12 page)

Then he inserted between the patient’s gaping jaws a gnawed and discolored wedge of wood that had appeared in his hand from out of nowhere like a magical object. Grasping Mr. Turnbull by the shoulder and planting a knee in his lap, Dr. Fitzgibbon bent forward and commenced fumbling around inside his mouth with the pliers. “Very well,” he announced momentarily. “I believe I have it. Are you ready, Mr. Turnbull?” The man shook his head no, but too late, the evil pliers having already begun to twist and rock. Immediately, the black attendant, who had been accompanying these preliminaries with a delicately plunked interpretation of “Buffalo Gals,” sprang madly into action, strumming away with a wild stereotypical abandon while shouting out lyrics of utter incomprehensibility. He had become a man transformed, limbs jerking in uncoordinated spasms, one leg bouncing frantically up and down in a demented parody of a performer trying in vain to keep time to the music, bloodshot eyes rolling in their sockets like loose marbles; and the louder Mr. Turnbull screamed, the faster he played, his hand a dark blur dancing over the stained vellum diaphragm. Dr. Fitzgibbon’s face, red, wet, veins standing out in relief on both temples, seemed about to explode. All his wrenching and toiling had failed to dislodge a tooth whose roots appeared to reach down into the very earth itself. Immobilized by all these strange hands clutching at his body, Mr. Turnbull’s efforts to fend off this assault left him thrashing about as limply as a galvanized fish. Then, just when it seemed that neither doctor nor patient nor onlooker could endure the excruciating spectacle one instant longer, Dr. Fitzgibbon staggered backward brandishing aloft the heroic pliers that held between their metallic jaws a barely discernible nubbin of such inconsequential size one could scarcely believe it could have put up such a fight. The crowd erupted into a pandemonium of hoots, cheers and rollicking applause as Dr. Fitzgibbon dropped the carious trophy into a fluid-filled vial he then fitted into a slot in a wooden case full of other slots, other vials.

The muscular youths escaped into the approving grins and hearty back claps of their friends while Mr. Turnbull, his complexion gone white as a sail, leaned meticulously forward and spat onto the grass a thick wad of bloody phlegm. And the banjo man, reverting instantly to his previous demeanor of unreadable stolidity, doffed his green cap and, costume bells jingling, passed silently among the dispersing throng, collecting what coins he could.

“Whopping show,” someone exclaimed. “Why I’d pay fifty cents myself just to see it again.”

The crowd drifted away, almost reluctantly, reliving in words what they’d just seen, anticipating the tale they would carry home, “Mother, we went to town and saw the extraction and you should have heard the poor fool howl,” back to the farm, the dry goods store, the livery stable, the tannery and the bland succession of days so remarkable in their uniformity that existence itself could often seem to have taken on the guise of an elaborate practical joke in which the same day, with only trifling variations, was drawn round and round again like a wagonload of bricks, out the door at dawn, back in again at dusk, as there advanced over the unvarying seasons a surging sense of expectancy, a conviction profound and unshakable, that soon,
soon,
either now or tomorrow or the year after tomorrow (who could know when exactly?) something tremendous would arrive to redeem the quality of the day, and this belief, so indomitable, though typically half-conscious and inarticulate, was accompanied by an equally persuasive certainty that the waiting itself, the mystical devotion of attending, could serve to call forth the great something that perhaps you didn’t even know you were waiting for.

“Well, son,” commented Thatcher, who, along with the other delinquent passengers from the
Croesus,
all quite cognizant by now of the low boiling point of Captain Whelkington’s many humors, was hurrying along at a noticeably brisker pace than the dawdling locals, “to quote the immortal Sam Patch, ‘Some things can be done as well as others.’”

“I don’t want my teeth yanked,” said Liberty.

“I wouldn’t fret unduly about it. We Fish have robust parts, running back to the Middle Ages. We’ve chomped and chewed our way through one tyrannical regime after another. Your grandfather Benton went to his grave at age ninety-two with a full set of perfect teeth. Fish teeth were made for biting and holding on. Have no fear.”

Back at the boat, returning sightseers were presented with yet another memorable tableau to add to their unexpectedly rich store for the day. Out on the berm the excitable captain, having obviously worked himself into a fine pucker, had young Stumpy, pants at his ankles, prostrate over a barrel of pickled eels and was proceeding to lay siege to his shockingly white ass with a knotted ox-quirt while vigorously expostulating on certain obscure negligences in the performance of hoggee duties. At each blow a scarlet stripe appeared across those unblemished cheeks, as if Whelkington were wielding a stick dipped in paint. Stumpy kept eyes and mouth firmly locked, betraying nothing to this raving lunatic who happened to rule his life, at least this hopefully brief portion of it. Catching sight of his wayward passengers, the captain ceased in midstroke, allowing the corrected lad to hobble back to the boat as best he could, the black wind of his wrath sweeping down upon the thoughtless ingrates who’d dared to jeopardize packet schedules and the convenience of regulation-abiding travelers in order to indulge a taste for mindless frivolity which had no place on the illustrious Grand Western or anywhere else, for that matter, in these sober, hard-working States. He’d had a good mind to disembark and leave the stragglers to catch up how they might, suggesting that an energetic trot along the towpath would shake the tardiness out of the most cussed miscreant, even if he had paid full fare under the ridiculous presumption he was thereby guaranteed deck passage for the duration of the journey. The chastised party crept meekly back onto the boat, avoiding the captain’s merciless eyes.

The female Thornes, who’d remained stoically aboard the
Croesus,
refusing to go dashing off on a whim simply because everyone else did, emerged from the cabin where they’d been forced to take refuge from Whelkington’s vile language and more appalling behavior, all three visibly readjusting their lapsed facades to meet the obligations of public intercourse.

“So,” inquired Augusta, gliding rapidly up to Thatcher, old acquaintances reunited after a long parting, “how did you enjoy the big dental harlequinade?”

“Quite well, Miss Thorne, though I must admit I have seen better.”

“And your son?”

“He’s not easily discomposed. He hopes there’s a vagabond dentist in every town.”

She was openly scrutinizing the boy with a constable’s spiky gaze. He and Rose had wandered a short distance off to study an old man in a bespoken deck chair with a truncated back, apparently whittling a firelog into a toothpick. The pile of shavings at his feet was ankle-high, and growing. Rose kept trying to communicate with Liberty through a series of improvised hand gestures. I like you, she mouthed, pointing back and forth with her finger. Can I be your friend?

Fire? mouthed Liberty, feigning confusion and indicating the man’s yellowy heap of wooden curlicues. Fire?

“I believe he bears a most uncanny likeness to the Duke of Wellington, don’t you think?” interjected the elder Mrs. Thorne. “The youthful duke, of course, before he became a duke, though never having met the great man myself, I couldn’t say for certain, but the resemblance, nevertheless, is strikingly present.”

“Oh, Mother, you promised this morning to refrain from prating for the remainder of the trip.”

“But I’m not prating, daughter, I am merely giving voice to an observation I thought might be of some interest.”

“Well, it isn’t.”

The dusted veneer of Mrs. Thorne’s face collapsed like the crust of a cooling pie, and without a word she retired to the dining salon and the reliable hospitality of complete strangers.

“Will she be all right?” asked a concerned Thatcher. “Does she require attendance of any kind?”

“Heavens no,” snapped Augusta, impatiently. “’Tis only her manner to which, over the years, I’ve become tediously accustomed. But tell me, do all you impetuous Americans go at each endeavor with the same unbridled enthusiasm? I mean, you all rushed out higgledy-piggledy to gulp down that dental disaster as if it were a fabulous picnic being served up on the banks of the canal.”

“Yes,” Thatcher admitted, “we are the great devourers. We devour experience, we devour geography, we devour time, we devour each other. A nation of unrestrained appetites, no question of that.”

“And yet you proclaim the value of individuality as of the highest worth, above all others, while chasing your so-called happiness in a ragtag mob.”

Thatcher was unable to suppress a smile. “I’m afraid, ma’am, you have unwittingly penetrated the recesses of Independence Hall. Yes, we are all proud, self-sufficient individualists, but we prefer to pursue our separate interests in a group.”

“Well, I fail to see how a society based upon such pronounced contrarieties can ever possibly work out in the end.”

“Neither do many of us.”

“Low bridge!” bellowed the helmsman.

As they squatted there, a breath apart on the humped deck, her questing blue eyes happened to brush across his pleasant but guarded browns. “I must also inform you, Mr. Fish—if that is indeed your proper name—that English though I may be, a fool I am not. I believe I possess adequate intelligence and sensitivity to comprehend when I am, in the quaint parlance of your countrymen, being diddled.”

“Why, Miss Thorne, I regret I haven’t the vaguest clue as to what you are referring.”

“I won’t protest, Mr. Fish. Not another word on this matter. I do, however, wish to confess to you that wherever I may go, whatever implausible sights I may witness or fantastic characters I might encounter, you and your ‘afflicted’”—the shifting tone of her voice emphatically installing the talons of quote marks about the adjective—“son shall no doubt remain the most singular creatures I’ve ever been introduced to in this preposterous land. Good day to you, sir.” After calling sharply for Rose, she took her younger sister’s hand and retreated briskly below.

That evening, at the first tinkle of the supper bell Liberty leaped up, raced down the stairs ahead of the stampeding adults and threw himself bodily across two empty chairs, determined that, for one meal at least, he and his father would receive their proper comfort and their proper share.

A garrulous judge from Lockport, long retired and newly widowed, charging his impoverished days with weekly packet excursions, a different destination each trip, drew the table into a theoretical consideration of the comparative intellectual abilities of the horse, the mule and the ass—the judge arguing that the horse’s willingness to drink freely from a bucket of polluted canal water leveled a decided stroke against that creature’s mental capacities, while the mule’s refusal to touch so much as a drop of the vile liquid, no matter how thirsty, gave proof of a superior discernment, but the stupidest, of course, had to be the ass, the two-legged beast trudging insensate to the hairy rear of his betters, downwind, downstream, downsoil, subsisting entirely on stale oaths and tainted brainpop.

In the ensuing discussion Thatcher happened to mark Augusta’s shrewd eye observing them from across the room, trickster father and “dumb” son chatting volubly with one another, and he acknowledged her discovery, over the monkishly bowed heads of their fellow diners, with a look that admitted clearly, Yes, madam, all apologies, no pardon too sincere, but we simply got caught up in—what shall I say?—an irresistible turn of good ol’ one hundred percent American fun.

Around nine that evening, as Mrs. Callahan and off-duty crew members set about converting the dining salon into a sleeping chamber, pushing the tables into the center of the room, fitting the narrow bunks into the walls at a width hardly greater than that of bookshelves, drawing an illusive red curtain of privacy between the men forward and the women aft, though every groan, whisper, snore, fart and dream-cry would be readily apprehended by all, and while seasoned travelers were already drawing lots for the beds and arguing over precedence in the use of the communal toothbrush, Liberty and his father settled themselves on the roof deck to observe the advent of night. The sun flamed and swelled and slowly sank, burnishing the curve of the sky, the undersides of drifting clouds, tinting the air itself a soft salmon pink. Swallows flitted about in the approaching darkness, feeding on the gallinippers that even now were swarming over the boat, where a basket of pennyroyal leaves was being distributed to rub as a repellant on exposed hands and faces. Someone had produced a fiddle around which soon congregated a makeshift chorus of willing singers, obscure figures in black cutout against the last fading light, and then the familiar strains of “Old Folks at Home” rose up against the night in fluidly adroit, unforgettable harmony and it was possible to believe that the world and the things of the world were connected by a melody of their own, persistent though often indistinct, traces of which could be heard lurking even beneath the sentimental cadences of a popular tune of the day, and as the final note dissolved into a pure sustained silence, all noise and motion beyond the boat, the toiling mules, seemed to cease—even inanimate objects held their breaths—and into that becalmed interval glided, silent as a shade, the long, graceful packet and its entranced human cargo, as through a mystic cavern hewn from nature’s own stuff, and then the bow hit the strings (the opening bars to “Turkey in the Straw”) and the spell was broken, and time fell back onto the travelers’ shoulders like a cloak spun of material so gorgeously fine you didn’t even realize it was wearing you until it had been briefly whisked away. Above the clustering treetops the scythelike smile of a crescent moon came sailing radiantly in, spilling cold fire in its wake. Stars began to punch their way through the black sky-fabric, each hard prickly point only the tip of a longing without stricture. In the levels Liberty could see far up the great, glimmering waterway where ranged in near faultless symmetry the tenderly glowing lamps of the preceding boats dwindled off into the western distance, a floating panorama matched by the approaching headlights of the boats behind, emerging in unnumbered stateliness, one after another, from the darkness aft to move surely on into the obliterating darkness ahead, and for a drawn moment he understood absolutely, as only the heart can be convinced, that here, at the best end to the best day of his life (so far), he was joined in a grand procession of enigmatic intent that had been launched upon the tide untold centuries past and would assuredly continue on in the same wondrous and determined manner to the edge of doom, and Liberty, young as he was, felt quite fortunate he had been able to obtain a ticket.