My great-grandfather, Ezekiel Spartacus Hog, was eaten by clams.
Great-Grandpappy was one of the last of the great Iowan whalers, destroying God's creatures upon the high seas in his Connestoga clipper. They say he did have a powerful enmity with one particular whale, a humpback of uncommon bastardry. Ezekiel Spartacus did cross paths with this whale upon a voyage, and was struck by the beast's lazy eye and wavy mouth. On his return to port he won no small measure of fame publishing unflattering caricatures of the whale in several of the city papers. One admirer was the debutante Amelia Yood, the alluring heiress to the great Yood corn fortune. The two soon were married and brought forth my grandfather Boethius Allende Hog, later the first man to die of ice cream headache--although that is a story for another time.
The whale was incensed that such sport should be made at his expense, and swore a mighty oath upon hine heart to destroy all my Great-Grandpappy held dear. By night he would creep up the Iowan coast to the family estate on Cape Scrod, and whisper to my great-grandmother through the open window of her bedchamber. The dangerous young debutante was now a stiff and respectable matron, and pined for her lost youth. The humpback poisoned her mind with his tales of danger and excitement at sea, and the powerful erotic thrill that comes only from pitting oneself against the full fury of the elemental Earth. The whale's rich, creamy, Barry-White-esque songs were too much for her romantic disposition, and he seduced her thus into abandoning her family and running off to live in sin. The humpback, having won his prize, was of no mind to keep her, though; and he did drown her forthwith as Great-Grandaddy watched in most abject humiliation. They say that no man before or since did see such a look on a whale's face as Ezekiel Spartacus did then in the cold light of the Moon amid the whispering of the corn.
Thus did my ancestor pledge to spend all his remaining days in pursuit of vengeance, a quest that did take him halfway around the world after that meddlesome cetecean. His men deserted him one by one, swearing that he had lost all sound judgement in the bitter heat of his anger. As each one jumped ship he hardened his heart once more, until no man could abide his company and he crewed his Connestoga clipper with none but mute apes in jaunty caps, maddened with strong drink. After many battles (which each would form no small anecdote in their own right) he did corner the whale in the Lesser Antilles, in the Caribbean. One by one the apes fell, and the ship itself was smashed upon the rocks by the strength of the whale's flukes, which was as that of no humpback's before its. Then Man and Whale did face each other in single combat, Great-Grandfather betaking himself unto a one-man dinghy with his fierce harpoon to do battle with his nemesis.
All through the day and night they did clash. The seas ran red with blood and small children on the islands surrounding were plagued with nightmares from the terrible ceaseless screams of fury and despair. The two combatants did most cruelly abuse each other with hateful words as they fought, fuelled by their bottomless and all-consuming malice. Such epithets do not bear repeating; even the unborn did weep to hear them. Long did the contest rage, steel against fluke and flipper, and indeed it seemed that their strife might endure to the very Crack of Doom, but then at last Ezekiel Spartacus caught the whale off his guard with the patented Sucker Stab which had felled so many whales before. He sank his harpoon deep into that whaley breast, puncturing the beast's blubbery, rubbery heart. With much thrashing and cursing he did churn the waters into a bloody foam, as his life flowed out to merge with the cold, cold sea.
Then my great-grandfather tripped on an oarlock and plunged overboard, followed closely by his harpoon, which pricked him through his shoulder and pinned him to a gravelly bed of clams. By dint of much awkward stretching he could raise his face above the waves for ten seconds every score of minutes, and thus he had breath to swear and curse even as he could by no means remove the harpoon from his shoulder or from the earth beneath. For two weeks he endured, cursing and making the most lewd and anatomically improbable imprecations as the clams slowly feasted upon his flesh.
The dying humpback saw all of this, and its horrid wavy mouth was twisted into a bitter and sardonic smirk as the two foes expired helpless and alone.
Ironically, the caricatures were actually the work of a man named Smedley of Trenton, New Jersey, and bore my great-grandfather's name solely to add a dash of nautical authenticity to the endeavour. Had Ezekiel Spartacus swallowed his manly pride and admitted to the imposture, he could have forged a peace with the whale, and perhaps even bonds of brotherhood; for in their hearts of hearts the two were the same.
What bastards.
Posted by aloysius at March 13, 2007 06:13 PM |