“Evan, you know I am not talking about goat.”
“Er.”
“I am sure there are all the things you said in that stew, but I am sure there are also parts of human beings.”
“Uh.”
“The parts that had been removed.”
“Umm.”
“So do not talk of goats.”
“ Plum, we have to eat.” She made a face. “I know, I know, but we have to eat. We can’t let ourselves starve to death.” She went on making a face. “Well, look at it another way. I mean, how do you know you won’t like it? Remember the fuss you made about the dead antelope? Couldn’t stand the idea of eating it, you said. It was dead meat, meat just lying there on the ground, you said. Unrefrigerated, probably teeming with bacteria, you said. But once you tasted it-”
“Evan, please stop it.”
“You can’t starve yourself.”
“Human beings fast for a month or more without harming themselves. They gain religious insight and learn important truths.”
“The most important truth they learn is that eating is good for you.”
“That is not true, Evan.” She tossed her head. “I am not eating any of that.”
“You could just pick out bits of vegetable-”
“I am not eating. I am not hungry. I am tired, Evan, and I think I will lie down and go to sleep before it is discovered that I am neither black nor a man.” Her eyes welled with tears. “You were right.”
“About what?”
“When you told me I should stay in Griggstown.” All at once she threw her arms around my neck and sobbed.
“Oh, I’m afraid,” she said. “I am truly afraid.”
When she was asleep I slipped out of the hut and joined the crowd. The feast was getting into gear now, with the stew almost ready for serving. The young bloods were starting to tank up on a home-brewed malty liquor, and when someone passed me a gourd of it I didn’t pass it back. It smelled of moldy bread and spoiled fruit, but the taste wasn’t bad and the stuff had a reasonable kick to it. It couldn’t compare to the grain alcohol of the night before, which was probably just as well. I refilled my gourd a few times and mingled with my fellow soldiers, scratching and picking my nose and grunting amiably at them. I thought I looked like a short-haired white man who had stained his skin with roots and berries, but if they thought as much they were good enough to keep it to themselves. They didn’t even seem to notice my ignorance of their language. Every once in a while I would say “Banana Kropotkin Pulaski,” a phrase I kept hearing others use, and I guess it was always appropriate, because no one took a swing at me.
Of course the fact that they were all stoned out of their gourds may have helped a little.
Somewhere along the way I set the gourd aside and accepted a plate heaped high with stew. I had been drinking not only because I wanted to but also with the thought in mind that the stew would be easier to take after a couple of belts, and now I tried it, and it was great. I guess there was human flesh in it. When all is said and done, I don’t think there’s any way to avoid that conclusion. I’ve tried rationalizing my way out of it often enough, God knows, but it won’t hold up. There was human flesh in that fine kettle of flesh, and I ate a heaping plateful of crud served from that kettle, ate it without picking it over, ate it unselectively and voraciously, and the argument that I might well have actually consumed nothing more unorthodox than pork and chicken and lamb (or chevon) is pure sophistry.
They were never going to believe this in Paramus.
Once I had finished with my food I let myself withdraw from the party. The festive mood had not quite caught hold of me, and I was afraid that another gourd of punch would make me lose my cool. I went back to my hut to check on Plum. She was still sleeping, and from the tenor of her breathing she was sleeping well, untroubled by nightmares. I wished her well and stretched out beside her for a few moments of rest. I went through the full cycle of relaxation exercises, all of which were easier on a full stomach and with a modicum of alcohol in my system. Certain muscle groups were stubborn – the eyelids, the solar plexus area, the calf of my left leg, each of them showing a persistent propensity for tightening up of their own accord. But I managed to unwind fairly well, and when I packed it in after a half hour or so and yawned and stretched and yawned again and sat up, I was better rested than I had been in a couple of days.
Outside, the party was just getting into top form. The bloody minded cannibals were dancing up a storm. They had discarded their clothing, and their red genitals flashed in the firelight. There seemed to be a limitless supply of the malt liquor, and it seemed to have a far greater effect upon them than it had on me. Every once in a while one of them would go rigid and fall over as if he had been clubbed. His fellows would leave him where he lay, and he would just stay there without moving anything.
It occurred to me, and not for the first time, that this would have been an ideal time for the three of us to get the hell out of there. I had been thinking this ever since they trotted out the booze, and the more the red crotch set drank, the more sense the idea made to me. But Bowman was still in Sheena’s hut, and there were two sober guards in front of that hut, and Plum was asleep, and we hadn’t made plans, and it looked as though we would have to put it off for a day or two. Not for too long, though, because judging from the familiarity my cannibal friends were displaying out there, feasts were not that unusual a part of army life. It looked as though they did this sort of thing rather often.
I did slip outside three or four times looking for Bowman, but it was no use. The first few times the sentry was doing his job and I couldn’t even get close to Sheena’s hut. The final time I got to it and inside it, and I called Bowman’s name a few times and got no response whatsoever. He seemed to be asleep, so I gave it up and went back to Plum. Now and then she would make a frightened noise and I would soothe her back to gentler sleep.
I was in the doorway at sunup when Bowman left Sheena’s tent and staggered across the central clearing, weaving his way through a maze of inert human forms. I gave him a wave and he came over and dropped to the ground, breathing very heavily. “Shee-it,” he said. “That woman ought to be outlawed. I never thought I’d live to have so much I wouldn’t want any more, but the day has done come. I know how Samson felt when he got that haircut. Maybe it wasn’t his hair they cut. You ever think of it that way?”
“Yes.”
“You did?” He shrugged, disappointed. I said something about how nice it would have been if we could have gotten the hell out of there that night, what with all of the others stoned. “Yeah, but we get another chance in two days,” he said. “There’s a party after every raid, and there’s a raid comin’ up tomorrow.”
“Another one?”
He scratched a map in the dirt. “She laid it all on me in between the acts. We’re here now. This here is the Yellowfoot River. It swings up and then winds down and out, and it’s the very same Yellowfoot that you followed north from Griggstown.”
“We followed the highway. That brilliant road the Retriever built.”
“Beautiful, ain’t it? You got to give the man credit.” He smiled and clicked his tongue. “Dig it, this here’s the Yellowfoot, and right at the top of this bend is the leprosarium. We break camp in a couple of hours and head for the river and get ourselves some boats, and then we-”