There were thirteen of us: Thorkell Son of Thorkell the Misaligned, Thorkell the Short, Thorkell Thorkellsson, Thorkell Cat, Thorkell Flat-Nose, Thorkell-neb, Thorkell Ale-Lover, Thorkell the Old, Thorkell the Deep-minded, Ofeig, Skeggi, Grim, and me. We were tough. We were hardy. We were bold.
Nonetheless the voyage was a disaster. A northeaster roared down on us like a herd of drunken whales and swept us far off course. We missed our landfall—Ireland—by at least two hundred miles and carried past into the open Atlantic. Eight weeks we sailed, looking for land. Thorkell the Old was bailing one gray afternoon and found three menhaden in his bucket. We ate them raw. I speared an albatross and hung it round my neck. It was no picnic.
Then one night we heard the cries of gulls like souls stricken in the dark. Thorkell Ale-Lover, keen of smell, snuffed the breeze. “Landfall near,” he said. In the morning the sun threw our shadows on a new land—buff and green, slabs of gray, it swallowed the horizon.
“Balder be praised!” said Thorkell the Old.
“Thank Frigg,” I said.
We skirted the coast, looking for habitations to sack. There were none. We’d discovered a wasteland. The Thorkells were for putting ashore to replenish our provisions and make sacrifice to the gods (in those days we hadn’t yet learned to swallow unleavened bread and dab our foreheads with ashes. We were real primitives). We ran our doughty sleek warship up a sandy spit and leapt ashore, fierce as flayed demons. It was an unnecessary show of force, as the countryside was desolate, but it did our hearts good.
The instant my feet touched earth the poetic fit came on me and I composed this verse:
New land, new-found beyond
The mickle waves by fell
Men-fish, their stark battle
Valor failèd them not.
No Edda, I grant you—but what can you expect after six weeks of bailing? I turned to Thorkell Son of Thorkell the Misaligned, my brain charged with creative fever. “Hey!” I shouted, “let’s name this new-found land!” The others crowded round. Thorkell son of Thorkell the Misaligned looked down at me (he was six four, his red beard hung to his waist). “We’ll call it—Newfoundland!” I roared. There was silence. The twin horns of Thorkell’s helmet pierced the sky, his eyes were like stones, “Thorkell-land,” he said.
We voted. The Thorkells had it, 9 to 4.
For two and a half weeks we plumbed the coast, catching conies, shooting deer, pitching camp on islands or guarded promontories. I’d like to tell you it was glorious—golden sunsets, virgin forests, the thrill of discovery and all that—but when your business is sacking and looting, a virgin forest is the last thing you want to see. We grumbled bitterly. But Thorkell son of Thorkell the Misaligned was loath to admit that the land to which he’d given his name was uninhabited—and consequently of no use whatever. We forged on. Then one morning he called out from his place at the tiller: “Hah!” he said, and pointed toward a rocky abutment a hundred yards ahead. The mist lay on the water like flocks of sheep. I craned my neck, squinted, saw nothing. And then suddenly, like a revelation, I saw them: three tall posts set into the earth and carved with the figures of men and beasts. The sight brought water to my eyes and verse to my lips (but no sense in troubling you with any dilatory stanzas now—this is a climactic moment).
We landed. Crept up on the carvings, sly and wary, silent as stones. As it turned out, our caution was superfluous: the place was deserted. Besides the carvings (fanged monsters, stags, serpents, the grinning faces of a new race) there was no evidence of human presence whatever. Not even a footprint. We hung our heads: another bootyless day. Ofeig—the berserker—was seized with his berserker’s rage and wound up hacking the three columns to splinters with his massive stoke-dealing sword.
The Thorkells were of the opinion that we should foray inland in search of a village to pillage. Who was I to argue? Inland we went, ever hardy and bold, up hill and down dale, through brakes and brambles and bogs and clouds of insects that rushed up our nostrils and down our throats. We found nothing. On the way back to the ship we were luckier. Thorkell-neb stumbled over a shadow in the path, and when the shadows leaped up and shot through the trees, we gave chase. After a good rib-heaving run we caught what proved to be a boy, eleven or twelve, his skin the color of copper, the feathers of birds in his hair. Like the Irish, he spoke gibberish.
Thorkell Son of Thorkell the Misaligned drew pictures in the sand and punched the boy in the chest until the boy agreed to lead us to his people, the carvers of wood. We were Norsemen, and we always got our way. All of us warmed to the prospect of spoils, and off we went on another trek. We brought along our short-swords and disemboweling spears—just in case—though judging from the boy’s condition (he was bony and naked, his eyes deep and black as the spaces between the stars) we had nothing to fear from his kindred.
We were right. After tramping through the under- and overgrowth for half an hour we came to a village: smoking cook pots, skinny dogs, short and ugly savages, their hair the color of excrement. I counted six huts of branches and mud, the sort of thing that might excite a beaver. When we stepped into the clearing—tall, hardy and bold—the savages set up a fiendish caterwauling and rushed for their weapons. But what a joke their weapons were! Ofeig caught an arrow in the air, looked at the head on it, and collapsed laughing: it was made of flint. Flint. Can you believe it? Here we’d come Frigg knows how many miles for plunder and the best we could do was a bunch of Stone Age aborigines who thought that a necklace of dogs’ teeth was the height of fashion. Oh how we longed for those clever Irish and their gold brooches and silver-inlaid bowls. Anyway, we subdued these screechers as we called them, sacrificed the whole lot of them to the gods (the way I saw it we were doing them a favor), and headed back to our terrible swift ship, heavy of heart. There was no longer any room for debate: Ireland, look out!
As we pointed the prow east the westering sun threw the shadow of the new land over us. Thorkell the Old looked back over his shoulder and shook his head in disgust. “That place’ll never amount to a hill of beans,” he said.
And then it was gone.
Days rose up out of the water and sank behind us. Intrepid Norsemen, we rode the currents, the salt breeze tickling our nostrils and bellying the sail. Thorkell Flat-Nose was our navigator. He kept two ravens on a cord. After five and a half weeks at sea he released one of them and it shot off into the sky and vanished—but in less than an hour the bird was spotted off starboard, winging toward us, growing larger by turns until finally it flapped down on the prow and allowed its leg to be looped to the cord. Three days later Flat-Nose released the second raven. The bird mounted high, winging to the southeast until it became a black rune carved into the horizon. We followed it into a night of full moon, the stars like milk splattered in the cauldron of the sky. The sea whispered at the prow, the tiller hissed behind us. Suddenly Thorkell Ale-Lover cried, “Land ho!” We were fell and grim and ravenous. We looked up at the black ribbon of the Irish coast and grinned like wolves. Our shoulders dug at the oars, the sea sliced by. An hour later we landed.
Ofeig was for sniffing out habitations, free-booting and laying waste. But dawn crept on apace, and Thorkell Son of Thorkell the Misaligned reminded him that we Norsemen attack only under cover of darkness, swift and silent as a nightmare. Ofeig did not take it well: the berserker’s rage came on him and he began to froth and chew at his tongue and howl like a skinned beast. It was a tense moment. We backed off as he grabbed for his battle-axe and whirred it about his head. Fortunately he stumbled over a root and began to attack the earth, gibbering and slavering, sparks slashing out from buried stones as if the ground had suddenly caught fire. (Admittedly, berserkers can be tough to live with—but you can’t beat them when it comes to seizing hearts with terror or battling trolls, demons or demiurges.)
Our reaction to all this was swift and uncomplicated: we moved up the beach about two hundred yards and settled down to get some rest. I stretched out in a patch of wildflowers an
d watched the sky, Ofeig’s howls riding the breeze like a celestial aria, waves washing the shore. The Thorkells slept on their feet. It was nearly light when we finally dozed off, visions of plunder dancing in our heads.
I woke to the sound of whetstone on axe: we were polishing the blade edges of our fearsome battle weapons. It was late afternoon. We hadn’t eaten in days. Thorkell-neb and Skeggi stood naked on the beach, basting one another with black mud scooped from a nearby marsh. I joined them. We darkened our flaxen hair, drew grim black lines under our eyes, chanted fight songs. The sun hit the water like a halved fruit, then vanished. A horned owl shot out across the dunes. Crickets kreeked in the bushes. The time had come. We drummed one another about the neck and shoulders for a while (“Yeah!” we yelled. “Yeah!”), fastened our helmets, and then raced our serpent-headed ship into the waves.
A few miles up the coast we came on a light flickering out over the dark corrugations of the sea. As we drew closer it became apparent that the source of light was detached from the coast itself—could it be an island? Our blood quickened, our lips drew back in anticipation. Ravin and rapine at last! And an island no less—what could be more ideal? There would be no escape from our pure silent fury, no chance of secreting treasures, no hope of reinforcements hastily roused from bumpkin beds in the surrounding countryside. Ha!
An island it was—a tiny point of land, slick with ghostly cliffs and crowned with the walls of a monastery. We circled it, shadows on the dark swell. The light seemed to emanate from a stone structure atop the highest crag—some bookish monk with his nose to the paper no doubt, copying by the last of the firelight. He was in for a surprise. We rode the bosom of the sea and waited for the light to fail. Suddenly Thorkell the Old began to cackle. “That’ll be Inishmurray,” he wheezed. “Fattest monastery on the west coast.” Our eyes glowed. He spat into the spume. “Thought it looked familiar,” he said. “I helped Thorir Paunch sack it back in ‘75.” Then the light died and the world became night.
We watched the bookish monk in our minds’ eyes: kissing the text and laying it on a shelf, scattering the fire, plodding wearily to his cell and the cold gray pallet. I recited an incendiary verse while we waited for the old ecclesiast to tumble into sleep:
Eye-bleed monk,
Night his bane.
Darkness masks
The sea-wound,
Mickle fell,
Mickle stark.
I finished the recitation with a flourish, rolling the mickles like thunder. Then we struck.
It was child’s play. The slick ghostly cliffs were like rolling meadows, the outer wall a branch in our path. There was no sentry, no watchdog, no alarm. We dropped down into the courtyard, naked, our bodies basted black, our doughty death-dealing weapons in hand. We were shadows, fears, fragments of a bad dream.
Thorkell Son of Thorkell the Misaligned stole into one of the little stone churches and emerged with a glowing brand. Then he set fire to two or three of the wickerwork cells and a pile of driftwood. From that point on it was pandemonium—Ofeig tumbling stone crosses, the Thorkells murdering monks in their beds, Skeggi and Thorkell the Old chasing women, Thorkell Ale-Lover waving joints of mutton and horns of beer. The Irish defended themselves as best they could, two or three monks coming at us with barbed spears and pilgrim’s staffs, but we made short work of them. We were Norsemen, after all.
For my own part, I darted here and there through the smoke and rubble, seized with a destructive frenzy, frightening women and sheep with my hideous blackened features, cursing like a jay. I even cut down a doddering crone for the sake of a gold brooch, my sweetheart Thorkella in mind. Still, despite the lust and chaos and the sweet smell of anarchy, I kept my head and my poet’s eye. I observed each of the principal Thorkells with a reporter’s acuity, noting each valorous swipe and thrust, the hot skaldic verses already forming on my lips. But then suddenly I was distracted: the light had reappeared in the little chapel atop the crag. I counted Thorkells (no mean feat when you consider the congeries of legs and arms, sounds and odors, the panicked flocks of sheep, pigs and chickens, the jagged flames, the furious womanizing, gourmandizing and sodomizing of the crew). As I say, I counted Thorkells. We were all in sight. Up above, the light grew in intensity, flaming like a planet against the night sky. I thought of the bookish monk and started up the hill.
The night susurrated around me: crickets, katydids, cicadas, and far below the rush of waves on the rocks. The glare from the fires behind me gave way to blackness, rich and star-filled. I hurried up to the chapel, lashed by malice aforethought and evil intent—bookish monk, bookish monk—and burst through the door. I was black and terrible, right down to the tip of my foreskin. “Arrrrr!” I growled. The monk sat at a table, his hands clenched, head bent over a massive tome. He was just as I’d pictured him: pale as milk, a fringe of dark pubic hair around his tonsure, puny and frail. He did not look up. I growled again, and when I got no response I began to slash at candles and pitchers and icons and all the other superstitious trappings of the place. Pottery splashed to the floor, shelves tumbled. Still he bent over the book.
The book. What in Frigg’s name was a book anyway? Scratchings on a sheet of cowhide. Could you fasten a cloak with it, carry mead in it, impress women with it, wear it in your hair? There was gold and silver scattered round the room, and yet he sat over the book as if it could glow or talk or something. The idiot. The pale, puny, unhardy, unbold idiot. A rage came over me at the thought of it—I shoved him aside and snatched up the book, thick pages, dark characters, the mystery and magic. Snatched it up, me, a poet, a Norseman, an annihilator, an illiterate. Snatched it up and watched the old man’s suffering features as I fed it, page by filthy page, into the fire. Ha!
We are Norsemen, hardy and bold. We mount the black waves in our doughty sleek ships and we go a-raiding. We are Norsemen, tough as stone. We are Norsemen.
(1977)
THE CHAMP
Angelo D. was training hard. This challenger, Kid Gullet, would be no pushover. In fact, the Kid hit him right where he lived: he was worried. He’d been champ for thirty-seven years and all that time his records had stood like Mount Rushmore—and now this Kid was eating them up. Fretful, he pushed his plate away.
“But Angelo, you ain’t done already?” His trainer, Spider Decoud, was all over him. “That’s what—a piddling hundred and some-odd flapjacks and seven quarts a milk?”
“He’s on to me, Spider. He found out about the ulcer and now he’s going to hit me with enchiladas and shrimp in cocktail sauce.”
“Don’t fret it, Killer. We’ll get him with the starches and heavy syrups. He’s just a kid, twenty-two. What does he know about eating? Look, get up and walk it off and we’ll do a kidney and kipper course, okay? And then maybe four or five dozen poached eggs. C’mon, Champ, lift that fork. You want to hold on to the title or not?”
First it was pickled eggs. Eighty-three pickled eggs in an hour and a half. The record had stood since 1941. They said it was like DiMaggio’s consecutive-game hitting streak: unapproachable. A world apart. But then, just three months ago, Angelo had picked up the morning paper and found himself unforked: a man who went by the name of Kid Gullet had put down 108 of them. In the following weeks Angelo had seen his records toppled like a string of dominoes: gherkins, pullets, persimmons, oysters, pretzels, peanuts, scalloped potatoes, feta cheese, smelts, Girl Scout cookies. At the Rendezvous Room in Honolulu the Kid bolted 12,000 macadamia nuts and 67 bananas in less than an hour. During a Cubs-Phillies game at Wrigley field he put away 43 hot dogs—with buns—and 112 Cokes. In Orkney it was legs of lamb; in Frankfurt, Emmentaler and schnitzel; in Kiev, pirogen. He was irrepressible. In Stelton, New Jersey, he finished off 6 gallons of borscht and 93 four-ounce jars of gefilte fish while sitting atop a flagpole. The press ate it up.
Toward the end of the New Jersey session a reporter from ABC Sports swung a boom mike up to where the Kid sat on his eminence, chewing the last of the gefilte fish. “
What are your plans for the future, Kid?” shouted the newsman.
“I’m after the Big One,” the Kid replied.
“Angelo D.?”
The camera zoomed in, the Kid grinned.
“Capocollo, chili and curry,
Big Man, you better start to worry.”
Angelo was rattled. He gave up the morning paper and banned the use of the Kid’s name around the Training Table. Kid Gullet: every time he heard those three syllables his stomach clenched. Now he lay on the bed, the powerful digestive machinery tearing away at breakfast, a bag of peanuts in his hand, his mind sifting through the tough bouts and spectacular triumphs of the past. There was Beau Riviere from Baton Rouge, who nearly choked him on deep-fried mud puppies, and Pinky Luzinski from Pittsburgh, who could gulp down 300 raw eggs and then crunch up the shells as if they were potato chips. Or the Japanese sumo wrestler who swallowed marbles by the fistful and throve on sashimi in a fiery mustard sauce. He’d beaten them all, because he had grit and determination and talent—and he would beat this kid too. Angelo sat up and roared: “I’m still the champ!”
The door cracked open. It was Decoud. “That’s the spirit, Killer. Remember D. D. Peloris, Max Manger, Bozo Miller, Spoonbill Rizzo? Bums. All of them. You beat ‘em, Champ.”
“Yeah!” Angelo bellowed. “And I’m going to flatten this Gullet too.”
“That’s the ticket: leave him gasping for Bromo.”
“They’ll be pumping his stomach when I’m through with him.”