Mount Helicon The Royal Colony of North Carolina Late October, 1770 6 страница
One such plume surged across the trail before him, and Roger turned to skirt it, making his way through tussocks of wet grass that soaked his stockings, and hanging boughs of pine that left dark patches of wetness on the shoulders of his coat as he passed. He paid the damp no mind, intent on his mental list of errands for the day.
To the tinkers’ wagons first, to buy some small token as a wedding present for Brianna. What would she like? he wondered. A bit of jewelry, a ribbon? He had very little money, but felt the need to mark the occasion with a gift of some sort.
He would have liked to put his own ring on her finger when they made their vows, but she had insisted that the cabochon ruby that had belonged to her grandfather would do fine; it fit her hand perfectly, and there was no need to spend money on another ring. She was a pragmatic person, Bree was—sometimes dismayingly so, in contrast to his own romantic streak.
Something practical but ornamental, then—like a painted chamber pot? He smiled to himself at the idea, but the notion of practicality lingered, tinged with doubt.
He had a vivid memory of Mrs. Abercrombie, a staid and practical matron of Reverend Wakefield’s congregation, who had arrived at the manse in hysterics one evening in the midst of supper, saying that she had killed her husband, and whatever should she do? The Reverend had left Mrs. Abercrombie in the temporary care of his housekeeper, while he and Roger, then a teenager, had hastened to the Abercrombie residence to see what had happened.
They had found Mr. Abercrombie on the floor of his kitchen, fortunately still alive, though groggy and bleeding profusely from a minor scalp wound occasioned by his having been struck by the new electric steam iron which he had presented to his wife on the occasion of their twenty-third wedding anniversary.
“But she said the old one scorched the tea towels!” Mr. Abercrombie had repeated at plaintive intervals, as the Reverend skillfully taped up his head with Elastoplast, and Roger mopped up the kitchen.
It was the vivid memory of the gory splotches on the worn lino of the Abercrombies’ kitchen that decided him. Pragmatic Bree might be, but this was their wedding. Better, worse, death do us part. He’d go for romantic—or as romantic as could be managed on one shilling, threepence.
There was a flash of red among the spruce needles nearby, like the glimpse of a cardinal. Bigger than the average bird, though; he stopped, bending to peer through an opening in the branches.
“Duncan?” he said. “Is that you?”
Duncan Innes came out of the trees, nodding shyly. He still wore the scarlet Cameron tartan, but had left off his splendid coat, instead wrapping the end of his plaid shawllike round his shoulders in the cozy old style of the Highlands.
“A word, a Smeòraich?” he said.
“Aye, sure. I’m just off to the tinkers’—walk with me.” He turned back to the trail—now clear of smoke—and they made their way companionably across the mountain, side by side.
Roger said nothing, waiting courteously for Duncan to choose his way into the conversation. Duncan was diffident and retiring by temperament, but observant, perceptive, and stubborn in a very quiet way. If he had something to say, he’d say it—given time. At last he drew breath and started in.
“Mac Dubh did say to me as how your Da was a minister—that’s true, is it?”
“Aye,” Roger said, rather startled at the subject. “Or at least—my real father was killed, and my mother’s uncle adopted me; it was him was the minister.” Even as he spoke, Roger wondered why he should feel it necessary to explain. For most of his life, he had thought and spoken of the Reverend as his father; and surely it made no difference to Duncan.
Duncan nodded, clicking his tongue in sympathy.
“But ye will have been Presbyterian yourself, then? I did hear Mac Dubh speak of it.” Despite Duncan’s normal good manners, a brief grin showed beneath the edge of his ragged mustache.
“I expect ye did, aye,” Roger replied dryly. He’d be surprised if the whole Gathering hadn’t heard Mac Dubh speak of it.
“Well, the thing about it is, so am I,” Duncan said, sounding rather apologetic.
Roger looked at him in astonishment.
“You? I thought you were Catholic!”
Duncan made a small embarrassed noise, lifting the shoulder of his amputated arm in a shrug.
“No. My great-grandda on my mother’s side was a Covenanter—verra fierce in his beliefs, aye?” He smiled, a little shyly. “That was watered down a good bit before it came to me; my Mam was godly, but Da wasna much of a one for the kirk, nor was I. And when I met up wi’ Mac Dubh . . . well, it wasna as though he’d asked me to go to Mass with him of a Sunday, was it?”
Roger nodded, with a brief grunt of comprehension. Duncan had met with Jamie in Ardsmuir Prison, after the Rising. While most of the Jacobite troops had been Catholic, he knew there had been Protestants of different stripes among them, too—and most would likely have kept quiet about it, outnumbered by the Catholics in close quarters. And it was true enough that Jamie’s and Duncan’s later career in smuggling would have offered few occasions for religious discourse.
“Aye, so. And your wedding to Mrs. Cameron tonight . . .”
Duncan nodded, and sucked in a corner of his mouth, gnawing contemplatively at the edge of his mustache.
“That’s it. Am I bound, d’ye think, to say anything?”
“Mrs. Cameron doesn’t know? Nor Jamie?”
Duncan shook his head silently, eyes on the trampled mud of the trail.
Roger realized that it was, of course, Jamie whose opinion was important here, rather than Jocasta Cameron’s. The issue of differing religion had evidently not seemed important to Duncan—and Roger had never heard that Jocasta was in any way devout—but hearing about Jamie’s response to Roger’s Presbyterianism, Duncan had now taken alarm.
“Ye went to see the priest, Mac Dubh said.” Duncan glanced at him sidelong. “Did he—” He cleared his throat, flushing. “I mean, did he oblige ye to be . . . baptized Romish?”
An atrocious prospect to a devout Protestant, and plainly an uncomfortable one to Duncan. It was, Roger realized, an uncomfortable thought to him, too. Would he have done it, if he had to, to wed Bree? He supposed he would have, in the end, but he admitted to having felt a deep relief that the priest hadn’t insisted on any sort of formal conversion.
“Ah . . . no,” Roger said, and coughed as another fan of smoke washed suddenly over them. “No,” he repeated, wiping streaming eyes. “But they don’t baptize you, ye know, if ye’ve been christened already. You have been, aye?”
“Oh, aye.” Duncan seemed heartened by that. “Aye, when I—that is—” A faint shadow crossed his face, but whatever thought had caused it was dismissed with another shrug. “Yes.”
“Well, then. Let me think a bit, aye?”
The tinkers’ wagons were already in sight, huddled like oxen, their merchandise shrouded in canvas and blankets against the rain, but Duncan stopped, clearly wanting the matter settled before going on to anything else.
Roger rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, thinking.
“No,” he said finally. “No, I think ye needna say anything. See, it’ll not be a Mass, only the marriage service—and that’s just the same. Do ye take this woman, do ye take this man, richer, poorer, all that.”
Duncan nodded, attentive.
“I can say that, aye,” he said. “Though it did take a bit of coming to, the richer, poorer bit. Ye’ll ken that, though, yourself.”
He spoke quite without any sense of irony, merely as one stating an obvious fact, and was plainly taken aback at his glimpse of Roger’s face in response to the remark.
“I didna mean anything amiss,” Duncan said hastily. “That is, I only meant—”
Roger waved a hand, trying to brush it off.
“No harm done,” he said, his voice as dry as Duncan’s had been. “Speak the truth and shame auld Hornie, aye?”
It was the truth, too, though he had somehow managed to overlook it until this moment. In fact, he realized with a sinking sensation, his situation was a precise parallel with Duncan’s: a penniless man without property, marrying a rich—or potentially rich—woman.
He had never thought of Jamie Fraser as being rich, perhaps because of the man’s natural modesty, perhaps simply because he wasn’t—yet. The fact remained that Fraser was the proprietor of ten thousand acres of land. If a good bit of that land was still wilderness, it didn’t mean it would stay that way. There were tenants on that property now; there would be more soon. And when those tenancies began to pay rents, when there were sawmills and gristmills on the streams, when there were settlements and stores and taverns, when the handful of cows and pigs and horses had multiplied into fat herds of thriving stock under Jamie’s careful stewardship . . . Jamie Fraser might be a very rich man indeed. And Brianna was Jamie’s only natural child.
Then there was Jocasta Cameron, demonstrably already a very rich woman, who had stated her intention to make Brianna her heiress. Bree had exigently refused to countenance the notion—but Jocasta was as naturally stubborn as her niece, and had had more practice at it. Besides, no matter what Brianna said or did, folk would suppose . . .
And that was what was truly sitting in the bottom of his stomach like a curling stone. Not just the realization that he was in fact marrying well above his means and position—but the realization that everyone in the entire colony had realized it long ago, and had probably been viewing him cynically—and gossiping about him—as a rare chancer, if not an outright adventurer.
The smoke had left a bitter taste of ashes at the back of his mouth. He swallowed it down, and gave Duncan a crooked smile.
“Aye,” he said. “Well. Better or worse. I suppose they must see something in us, eh? The women?”
Duncan smiled, a little ruefully.
“Aye, something. So, ye think it will be all right, then, about the religion? I wouldna have either Miss Jo or Mac Dubh think I meant aught amiss by not speaking. But I didna like to make a fizz about it, and it’s no needed.”
“No, of course not,” Roger agreed. He took a deep breath and brushed damp hair off his face. “Nay, I think it’s all right. When I spoke to the—the Father, the only condition he made was that I should let any children be baptized as Catholics. But since that’s not a consideration for you and Mrs. Cameron, I suppose . . .” He trailed off delicately, but Duncan seemed relieved at the thought.
“Och, no,” he said, and laughed, a little nervously. “No, I think I’m no bothered about that.”
“Well, then.” Roger forced a smile, and clapped Duncan on the back. “Here’s luck to you.”
Duncan brushed a finger beneath his mustache, nodding.
“And you, a Smeòraich.”
He had expected Duncan to go off about his business, once his question was answered, but the man instead came with him, wandering slowly along the row of wagons in Roger’s wake, peering at the wares on display with a slight frown.
After a week’s haggling and bartering, the wagons were as full as they had been to start with—or more so, heaped with sacks of grain and wool, casks of cider, bags of apples, stacks of hides and other sundries taken in trade. The stock of fancies had dwindled considerably, but there were still things to be bought, as evidenced by the crowd of folk clustering round the wagons, thick as aphids on a rosebush.
Roger was tall enough to peer over the heads of most customers, and made his way slowly along the rank of wagons, squinting at this or that, trying to envision Brianna’s response to it.
She was a beautiful woman, but not inclined to fuss over her looks. In fact, he had narrowly stopped her cutting off most of her glorious red mane out of impatience at it dangling in the gravy and Jemmy yanking on it. Maybe a ribbon was practical. Or a decorated comb? More likely a pair of handcuffs for the wean.
He paused by a vendor of cloth goods, though, and bent to peer under the canvas, where caps and bright ribbons hung safely suspended out of the wet, stirring in the cool dimness like the tentacles of brilliant jellyfish. Duncan, plaid hitched up about his ears against the gusting breeze, came closer, to see what he was looking at.
“Looking for something in particular, are ye, sirs?” A peddler-woman leaned forward over her goods, bosom resting on her folded arms, and divided a professional smile between them.
“Aye,” Duncan said, unexpectedly. “A yard of velvet. Would ye be having such a thing? Good quality, mind, but the color’s not important.”
The woman’s eyebrows lifted—even in his best clothes, Duncan would strike no one as a dandy—but she turned without comment and began to rootle through her diminished stock.
“D’ye think Mrs. Claire would have some lavender left?” Duncan asked, turning to Roger.
“Aye, I know she has,” Roger replied. His puzzlement must have shown on his face, for Duncan smiled and ducked his head diffidently.
“’Twas a thought I had,” he said. “Miss Jo suffers from the megrims, and doesna sleep sae well as she might. I mind, my mither had a lavender pillow, and said she fell asleep like a babe the moment she laid her head upon it. So I thought, perhaps a bit o’ velvet—so as she could feel it against her cheek, aye?—and perhaps Mrs. Lizzie would stitch it up for me. . . .”
In sickness and in health . . .
Roger nodded his approval, feeling touched—and slightly shamed—by Duncan’s thoughtfulness. He had had the impression that the marriage between Duncan and Jocasta Cameron was principally a matter of convenience and good business—and perhaps it was. But mad passion wasn’t a necessary prerequisite for tenderness or consideration, was it?
Duncan, purchase concluded, took his leave and went off with the velvet safely sheltered under his plaid, leaving Roger to make a slow circuit of the remaining vendors, mentally selecting, weighing, and discarding, as he wracked his brain to think what item of this myriad would best please his bride. Earrings? No, the kid would pull them. Same for a necklace—or a hair ribbon, now he thought.
Still, his mind dwelled on jewelry. Normally, she wore very little. But she had worn her father’s ruby ring—the one Jamie had given him, the one he had given her when she accepted him for good—all through the Gathering. Jem slobbered on it now and then, but couldn’t really damage it.
He stopped suddenly, letting the crowd flow round him. He could see the gold in his mind’s eye, and the deep pink-red of the cabochon ruby, vivid on her long pale finger. Her father’s ring. Of course; why had he not seen that before?
True, Jamie had given him the ring, but that didn’t make it his to give in turn. And he wanted, very suddenly and very badly, to give Brianna something truly of his own.
He turned with decision, and made his way back to a wagon whose metal wares gleamed and glinted, even in the rain. He knew from experiment that his little finger was just the size of her ring finger.
“This one,” he said, holding up a ring. It was cheap; made of braided strands of copper and brass, it would undoubtedly turn her finger green in minutes. So much the better, he thought, handing over his money. Whether she wore it all the time or not, she would be marked as his.
For this reason shall a woman leave her father’s house, and cleave unto her husband, and the two shall be one flesh.
RIOTOUS UNREST
BY THE END OF THE FIRST HOUR, I had a substantial crowd of patients waiting, despite the intermittent drizzle. It was the final day of the Gathering, and people who had stood the pain of a toothache or the doubt of a rash had suddenly decided that they must seize the chance of having it seen to.
I dismissed a young woman with incipient goiter, admonishing her to procure a quantity of dried fish, as she lived too far inland to be sure of getting fresh each day, and eat some daily for its iodine content.
“Next!” I called, brushing damp hair out of my eyes.
The crowd parted like the Red Sea, revealing a small, elderly man, so thin he might be a walking skeleton, clad in rags and carrying a bundle of fur in his arms. As he shambled toward me through the ranks of recoiling people, I discovered the reason for the crowd’s deference; he stank like a dead raccoon.
For a moment, I thought the pile of grayish fur might be a dead raccoon—there was already a small pile of furs and hides near my feet, though my patients usually went to the trouble of separating these from their original possessors before presenting them to me—but then the fur stirred, and a pair of bright eyes peered out of the tangled mass.
“My dog’s hurt,” the man announced brusquely. He set the dog on my table, shoving the jumble of instruments aside, and pointed to a jagged tear in the animal’s flank. “You’ll tend him.”
This wasn’t phrased as a request, but it was, after all, the dog who was my patient, and he seemed fairly civil. Medium-sized and short-legged, with a bristly, mottled coat and ragged ears, he sat placidly panting, making no effort to get away.
“What happened to him?” I moved the tottering basin out of danger, and bent to rummage for my jar of sterile sutures. The dog licked my hand in passing.
“Fightin’ with a she-coon.”
“Hmm,” I said, surveying the animal dubiously. Given its improbable parentage and evident friendliness, I thought any overtures made to a female raccoon were probably inspired by lust, rather than ferocity. As though to confirm this impression, the animal extruded a few inches of moist pink reproductive equipment in my direction.
“He likes you, Mama,” Bree said, keeping a straight face.
“How flattering,” I muttered, hoping that the dog’s owner would not be moved to any similar demonstration of regard. Fortunately, the old man appeared not to like me in the slightest; he ignored me completely, sunken eyes fixed broodingly on the clearing below, where the soldiers were going through some drill.
“Scissors,” I said, resigned, holding out my palm.
I clipped away the matted fur near the wound, and was pleased to find no great swelling or other signs of infection. The gash had clotted well; evidently it had been some time since the injury. I wondered whether the dog had met its nemesis on the mountain. I didn’t recognize the old man, nor did he have the speech of a Scot. Had he been at the Gathering at all? I wondered.
“Er . . . would you hold his head, please?” The dog might be friendly; that didn’t mean his good nature would remain unimpaired as I jabbed a needle through his hide. His owner stayed sunk in gloom, though, and made no move to oblige. I glanced around for Bree, looking for help, but she had suddenly disappeared.
“Here, a bhalaich, here, then,” said a soothing voice beside me, and I turned in surprise to find the dog sniffing interestedly at the proffered knuckles of Murray MacLeod. Seeing my look of surprise, he shrugged, smiled, and leaned over the table, grabbing the astonished dog by scruff and muzzle.
“I should advise ye to be quick about it, Mrs. Fraser,” he said.
I took a firm grip of the leg nearest me and started in. The dog responded exactly as most humans did in similar circumstances, wriggling madly and trying to escape, its claws scrabbling on the rough wood of the table. At one point, it succeeded in breaking free of Murray, whereupon it leaped off the table altogether and made for the wide-open spaces, sutures trailing. I flung myself bodily upon it, and rolled through leaves and mud, scattering onlookers in all directions until one or two of the bolder souls came to my assistance, pinning the mangy beast to the ground so that I might finish the job.
I tied the last knot, clipped the waxed thread with Murray’s fleam—which had in fact been trampled underfoot in the struggle, though unfortunately not broken—and took my knee off the hound’s side, panting nearly as heavily as the dog was.
The spectators applauded.
I bowed, a little dazed, and shoved masses of disheveled curls out of my face with both hands. Murray was in no better case, his queue come undone and a jagged rent in his coat, which was covered with mud. He bent, seized the dog under the belly, and swung it off its feet, heaving it up on the table beside its owner.
“Your dog, sir,” he said, and stood wheezing gently.
The old man turned, laid a hand on the dog’s head, and frowned, glancing back and forth between me and Murray, as though unsure what to make of this tag-team approach to surgery. He looked back over his shoulder toward the soldiers below, then turned toward me, his sparse brows knotted over a beak of a nose.
“Who’re they?” he said, in tones of deep puzzlement. Not waiting for an answer, he shrugged, turned, and walked off. The dog, tongue lolling, hopped off the table and trotted off at its owner’s side, in search of more adventure.
I took a deep breath, brushed mud off my apron, smiled thanks to Murray, and turned to wash my hands before dealing with the next patient.
“Ha,” said Brianna, under her breath. “Got him!” She lifted her chin slightly, indicating something over my shoulder, and I turned to look.
The next patient was a gentleman. A real gentleman, that is, judging by his dress and bearing, both of which were a good deal superior to the general run. I had noticed him hovering near the edge of the clearing for some time, glancing back and forth between my center of operations and that of Murray, obviously in doubt as to which medico should have the privilege of his custom. Evidently the incident of the trapper’s dog had tipped the balance in my favor.
I glanced at Murray, who was looking distinctly po-faced. A gentleman would likely pay in cash. I gave Murray a slight shrug of apology, then put on a pleasant professional smile, and gestured the new patient onto my stool.
“Do sit down, sir,” I said, “and tell me where it hurts.”
The gentleman was a Mr. Goodwin of Hillsborough, whose chief complaint, it seemed, was a pain in his arm. This was not his only trouble, I saw; a freshly healed scar zigzagged down the side of his face, the livid weal drawing down the corner of his eye and giving him a most ferocious squint. A faint discoloration over the cheek showed where some heavy object had hit him square above the jaw, as well, and his features had the blunt and swollen look of someone who had been badly beaten in the not-so-distant past.
Gentlemen were as likely to engage in brawls as anyone, given sufficient provocation, but this one seemed of rather advanced years for such entertainments, looking to be in his middle fifties, with a prosperous paunch pressing against the silver-buttoned waistcoat. Perhaps he had been set upon somewhere and robbed, I thought. Not on his way to the Gathering, though; these injuries were weeks old.
I felt my way carefully over his arm and shoulder, making him lift and move the arm slightly, asking brief questions as I palpated the limb. The trouble was obvious enough; he had dislocated the elbow, and while the dislocation had fortunately reduced itself, I thought he had torn a tendon, which was now caught between the olecranon process and the head of the ulna, the injury being thus aggravated by movement of the arm.
Not that that was all; palpating my way carefully down his arm, I discovered no fewer than three half-healed simple fractures to the bones of his forearm. The damage was not all internal; I could see the fading remnants of two large bruises on the forearm above the sites of fracture, each an irregular blotch of yellow-green with the darker red-black of deep hemorrhage at the center. Self-defense injuries, I thought, or I was a Chinaman.
“Bree, find me a decent splint, will you?” I asked. Bree nodded silently and vanished, leaving me to anoint Mr. Goodwin’s lesser contusions with cajeput ointment.
“How did you come by these injuries, Mr. Goodwin?” I asked casually, sorting out a length of linen bandage. “You look as though you’ve been in quite a fight. I hope at least the other fellow looks worse!”
Mr. Goodwin smiled faintly at my attempted witticism.
“’Twas a battle, indeed, Mrs. Fraser,” he replied, “and yet no fight of my own. A matter of misfortune, rather—being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as you might say. Still . . .” He closed the squinting eye in reflex as I touched the scar. An artless job by whoever had stitched it, but cleanly healed.
“Really?” I said. “Whatever happened?”
He grunted, but seemed not displeased at the necessity of telling me.
“You heard the officer this morning, surely, ma’am—reading out the Governor’s words regarding the atrocious behavior of the rioters?”
“I shouldn’t think the Governor’s words escaped anyone’s attention,” I murmured, pulling gently on the skin with my fingertips. “So you were at Hillsborough, is that what you’re telling me?”
“Indeed it is.” He sighed, but relaxed a little, finding that I wasn’t hurting him with my probings. “I live within the town of Hillsborough, in point of fact. And if I had remained quietly at home—as my good wife begged me to do”—he gave a rueful half-smile—“doubtless I should have escaped.”
“They do say that curiosity killed the cat.” I had spotted something when he smiled, and pressed gently with my thumb over the discolored area on his cheek. “Someone struck you across the face here, with some force. Did they break any teeth?”
He looked mildly startled.
“Aye, ma’am. But it’s nothing you can mend.” He pulled up his upper lip, revealing a gap where two teeth were missing. One premolar had been knocked out clean, but the other had broken off at the root; I could see a jagged line of yellowed enamel, gleaming against the dark red of his gum.
Brianna, arriving at this juncture with the splint, made a slight gagging noise. Mr. Goodwin’s other teeth, while essentially whole, were heavily crusted with yellow calculus, and quite brown with the stains of tobacco chewing.
“Oh, I think I can help a bit there,” I assured him, ignoring Bree. “It’s painful to bite there, isn’t it? I can’t mend it, but I can draw the remnants of the broken tooth, and treat the gum to prevent infection. Who hit you, though?”
He shrugged slightly, watching with a slightly apprehensive interest as I laid out the shiny pliers and straight-bladed scalpel for dentistry.
“To tell the truth, ma’am, I scarcely know. I had but ventured into the town to visit the courthouse. I am bringing suit against a party in Edenton,” he explained, a frown forming on his face at the thought of it, “and I am required to file documents in support of this action. However, I was unable to transact my business, as I found the street before the courthouse quite choked with men, many armed with cudgels, whips, and rough implements of that sort.”
Seeing the mob, he had thought to leave, but just then, someone threw a rock through a window of the courthouse. The crash of glass acted on the mob like a signal, and they had surged forward, breaking down the doors and shouting threats.
“I became concerned for my friend, Mr. Fanning, whom I knew to be within.”
“Fanning . . . that would be Edmund Fanning?” I was only listening with half an ear, as I decided how best to approach the extraction, but I did recognize that name. Farquard Campbell had mentioned Fanning, while telling Jamie the gory details of the riots following in the wake of the Stamp Act a few years previous. Fanning had been appointed postmaster for the colony, a lucrative position that had likely cost him a pretty penny to acquire, and had cost him still more dearly when he had been obliged to resign it under force. Evidently, his unpopularity had escalated in the five years since.
Mr. Goodwin compressed his lips, tightening them to a seam of disapproval.
“Yes, ma’am, that is the gentleman. And whatever scandal folk do spread about him, he has ever been a friend to me and mine—so when I heard such grievous sentiments expressed, to the threat of his life, I determined that I must go to his aid.”
In this gallant endeavor, Mr. Goodwin had been less than successful.
“I tried to force a path through the crowd,” he said, his eyes fixed on my hands as I laid his arm along the splint and arranged the linen bandage beneath it. “I could not make much way, though, and had barely gained the foot of the steps, when there came a great shout from within, and the crowd fell back, carrying me with it.”
Struggling to keep his feet, Mr. Goodwin had been horrified to see Edmund Fanning dragged bodily through the courthouse door, knocked down, and then pulled feet first down the steps, his head striking each one in turn.
“Such a noise as it made,” he said, shuddering. “I could hear it above the shouting, thumping like a melon being rolled downstairs.”