The Signature of All Things

in safety. She ate it gallantly, though, and without complaint.
    There was not another woman on board, nor an educated man. The sailors played cards long into the night, laughing and shouting and keeping her awake. Sometimes the men danced on the deck like spirits possessed, until Captain Terrence threatened to break their fiddles if they did not stop. They were all rough sorts, aboard the Elliot . One of the sailors caught a hawk off the coast of North Carolina, cut its wings, and watched it hop across the deck, for sport. Alma found this barbaric, but she said nothing. The next day, the sailors, bored and distracted, staged a wedding between two mules, decorating the animals in festive paper collars for the event. There was a fine ruckus of hooting and yelling. The captain let it happen; he saw no harm in it (perhaps, Alma thought, because it was a Christian wedding). Alma had never before in her life seen the likes of such behavior.
    There was nobody for Alma to speak to of serious matters, so she decided to stop speaking of serious matters. She resolved to be of good cheer and to make simple conversation with everyone. She vowed to make no enemies. As they would all be at sea together for the next five to seven months, this looked to be a sensible strategy. She even allowed herself to laugh at jests, so long as the men were not too coarse. She did not worry about coming to harm; Captain Terrence would not permit familiarity, and the men displayed no licentiousness toward Alma. (This did not surprise her. If men had not been interested in Alma at nineteen years, surely none would take notice of her at fifty-one.)
    Her closest companion was the small monkey that Captain Terrence kept as a pet. His name was Little Nick, and he would sit with Alma for hours, picking over her gently, always looking for new and odd things. Hehad a most intelligent and curious disposition. More than anything, the monkey was fascinated by the woven-hair bracelet that Alma wore around her wrist. He could never get over his perplexion that there was not a similar bracelet on her other wrist—although every morning he checked to see if a bracelet had grown there during the night. Then he would sigh and give Alma a resigned look, as though to say, “Why can you not just once be symmetrical ?” Over time, Alma learned to share her snuff with Little Nick. He would daintily place a crumb of it in one of his nostrils, sneeze cleansingly, and then fall asleep in her lap. She did not know what she would have done without his company.
    They rounded the tip of Florida and stopped in New Orleans to deliver the mules. Nobody mourned to see the mules go. In New Orleans, Alma saw the most extraordinary fog over Lake Pontchartrain. She saw bales of cotton and casks of cane sugar piled on the wharfs, awaiting shipment. She saw steamboats lined up in rows, as far as the eye could see, waiting to paddle up the Mississippi. She found good use for her French in New Orleans, though the accent was confusing. She admired the little houses with their gardens of seashells and clipped shrubbery, and she was dazzled by the women with their elaborate fashions. She wished she had more time for exploration, but was all too soon ordered back on board.
    Southward they sailed along the coast of Mexico. An outbreak of fever swept the ship. Scarcely anyone escaped it. There was a doctor on board, but he was more than useless, and so Alma soon found herself dispensing treatments from her own precious cache of purgatives and emetics. She did not think of herself as much of a nurse, but she was a fairly capable pharmacist, and her assistance won her a small group of admirers.
    Soon Alma herself fell ill, and was forced to keep to her berth. Her fevers gave her distant dreams and vivid fears. She could not keep her hands away from her quim, and woke in paroxysms of both pain and pleasure. She dreamed constantly of Ambrose. She had been making a heroic effort not to think of him, but the fever weakened the fortress of her mind, and his memory forced itself in—but distorted horribly. In her dreams, she saw him in the bathtub—just as she had seen him, nude, that one afternoon—but now his penis grew beautiful and erect, and he grinned at her lecherously while bidding her to suck him until she choked for breath. In other dreams, she watched Ambrose drown in the bathtub, and she woke in a panic, feelingcertain she had murdered him. She heard his voice one night whispering,