Eating Owen: The imagined true story of four Coffins from Nantucket: Abigail, Nancy, Zimri, and Owen

8/14/2019 Eating Owen: The imagined true story of four Coffins from Nantucket: Abigail, Nancy, Zimri, and Owen

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Eating Owen was first published in 2009 and is copyright © 2009

by Coffeetown Press. All rights reserved. No portion of this book

may be reproduced or used in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical, or other means without the prior written permission

of the publisher, who may be contacted by e-mail at the address at

the bottom of this page.

Published by Coffeetown Press.

Cover design by Sabrina S. Beidler

For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases,

please contact Coffeetown Press by e-mail at:

[email protected].

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beidler, Anne E., 1940-Eating Owen : the imagined true story of four coffins from

Nantucket : Abigail, Nancy, Zimri, and Owen / Anne E. Beidler.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-60381-022-7 (alk. paper)

1. Chase, Owen--Fiction. 2. Essex (Whaleship)--Fiction. 3.

Cannibalism--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3602.E379I43 2009

813'.6--dc22

2008052038



The Facts

The large, wooden Nantucket whaling ship Essex was

sunk, in November, 1819, by an apparently angry sperm

whale. The captain, George Pollard, and his twenty crew

members had only a few minutes to take refuge in their

three small whaling boats, much the size of life boats. They

were able to take with them only a few supplies, enough tolast them for only a short time in the middle of the Pacific

Ocean. Yet they lived in these small boats, with no shelter

and almost no food, for many, many weeks.

They knew approximately where they were in the Pacific

and Captain Pollard purposely decided to head for South

America, almost 3,000 miles away, rather than for any of the

relatively nearby islands, which he believed were inhabited by cannibals.

Pollard’s boat, which contained Owen Coffin also, was

soon attacked by another whale, but the men were able to

drive off that whale and repair their boat. The three boats

then came upon a small island, where they stopped to look

for water and food. Even though the island proved to be

barren, three of the crew elected to stay there and take theirchances, rather than continue to float aimlessly across the

vast desert of the central Pacific.

The three small boats stayed together for quite a while,

but eventually were separated by chance and by weather.

The First Mate’s boat was the first to disappear from

Pollard’s sight, although it was much later rescued. The

other boat disappeared completely and was never seen orheard of again. On Pollard’s boat, only the captain and

young Charles Ramsdell were still alive when their boat was





Abigail Coleman Coffin

“I have a penis,” said little Owen to his grandmother,

“and Daddy does too. His is really big. How big is yours?”

“Grandmas don’t need penises,” his grandmother said.

“At least not to carry around with them, flopping around and

in the way of everything. Or maybe I should say we do needthem, but we prefer to let other folks do the carrying.”

“I like carrying mine,” said Owen.

“And I like carrying you,” said his grandmother. She

scooped up the boy and carried him down to the point on the

beach, at the tip of the island that reached farthest out into

the sea. “I don’t see any ships today,” she said in a soft, tired

voice. She leaned her face into his neck and thought that if it were not for this bright and beautiful boy, her special

grandson, she would not have the strength to go on.

Little Owen looked at her as if he understood that there

was a sadness in her that ran so deep it had become who she

was. But he knew there was a tiny part of her that was

different from the sadness. He loved it when she went back

there to the long ago time. “Grandma,” he said gently, “tellme about when you were a little girl and the whale talked to

you.”

“Gracious sakes, but that was ages ago, now, wasn’t it?”

Abigail said, not wanting to remember. “That horrid

creature. I wish she’d never spoken a word to me. Yet

perhaps I should have listened more carefully to what she

said.”“Whales don’t really talk, do they?” asked Owen, knowing

very well what her answer would be.



E A T I N G O W E N 2

Abigail Coffin brushed her graying hair back from her

eyes, forgetting for a moment that she was old now and

cranky sometimes, maybe even a lot of the time, and already

a grandmother to seven little Nantucket children. As she felt

the salty air brush her face, she wanted to sit down on the

dry sand, up a ways from the scallops of water that glided

across the gently sloping beach. “Come sit down here with

me, my wonderful little O.,” she said, “and I will tell you

something about whales. They’re not all bad like that one.”

“But did you talk to that same whale every time?” Owen

asked his grandma, “And did the whale really talk to you justlike I’m talking now? And did she speak English like we do?

And how did you know it was a girl whale?” He hoped that

one of these questions would get his grandmother going with

the story that he loved to hear.

Abigail took handful after handful of sand and covered

their four feet as her mind wandered back to that happier

time. A time when she wanted only to be a whaler’s wife andmaybe live in a big house with a walk on top and take good

care of all her children there until her brave ship’s captain

came home, pushing through the crowds at the pier to reach

only her. A time before she heard the words of the whale.

Abigail used to go down to this very same beach with her

friend Lydia. They pulled up their skirts and ran into the

waves as far as they could before racing each other back tosafety. They always got wet all over eventually and came

home all soaked so that everyone knew they had been out

playing when they should have been helping in the gardens.

On that one day, the day Abigail wished had never

happened, she and Lydia had made an excuse to leave the

hot garden work and go down to the point to catch some fish

for supper. They took along a pail and a big butcher knife

that Lydia always used to gut the fish and to pry clams open.






into somebody else’s. Maybe I will dress up as a man and

sail to the South Pacific and meet those monster whales face

to face and come back here a hero.” She pulled in a small

codfish, cleaned it, and put it in the pail.

“Oh, Abigail,” said Lydia, “don’t talk such foolishness.

You’ll wait for your Hezekiah, just like the rest of us wait.

That’s what we women on Nantucket do. We wait for our

men. But let’s not wait here any longer. Let’s move a ways

down the beach. I’ll race you, Abigail.”

They giggled as they raced through the lapping water.

These two girls, who were almost women, still in thatdelicious in-between place where it seems you can hold on to

the advantages of both. They slowed down, however, when

they noticed a dark mass lying along the beach some

distance ahead of them. “Whatever is that up there?” asked

Lydia.

“Probably just the rotting wreck of somebody’s old fishing

boat,” said Abigail.Lydia hurried ahead, but stopped suddenly. “My

heavens,” she gasped, “it’s a whale baby. Look, he’s still

breathing. But he can’t stay here. He needs to be in the

water with his mother. How do you suppose he got here,

Abigail?”

Abigail did not want to get too close. “Don’t touch him,”

she said.“I just want to comfort him,” said Lydia, putting her hand

gently on his sandy skin. “He must be so scared, and I just

want to tell him everything will be all right.”

“But it won’t be,” said Abigail angrily. “He’s dying there

and soon he will start to stink, so we’d better get away from

here.”

“Abigail Coleman!” snapped Lydia, “how can you be so

cruel?”



B E I D L E R 5

“Me, cruel?” said Abigail. “You are the one who said it

first. That you wanted to be a whaler and not wait for the

men to do the killing. Here is your chance. Kill this whale

and then everybody will know that you are as brave as any

man.”

“Kill that baby? Why, I would never kill a baby whale,”

said Lydia. What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I think you don’t practice what you preach,” said Abigail.

“I think if we want our men to kill whales for us, then we

ought to be willing to do the same.”

“Abigail, don’t!” shouted Lydia, shrinking back in horror. Abigail reached into her bundle for the butcher knife.

Holding it with both hands, she held it over her head as she

approached the baby whale. With all her strength, over and

over again she plunged the huge knife blade into the head of

the whale. Blood spouted up in her face and over her hair

and onto her soaked and sandy skirt. The sand sucked up

most of the baby’s blood, but still more and more came outof the jagged holes that Abigail made.

Lydia choked back tears as they scrambled up the dunes

toward home, but Abigail could not stop laughing. “I am a

woman now,” she shouted to the sky, “for I have killed my

first whale!”

“Well, maybe you can marry Hezekiah now,” said Lydia

bitterly, “now that you have killed a whale for him. Then hecan stay home with the sheep and the children and you can

be the whaler in the family.”

The next day Abigail went back to that spot on the beach,

carrying a long knife and a large basket, to carve what meat

she could from her whale’s carcass. But the whale was gone.

Only a darkened place on the thirsty sand remained and

even that was washing away as the tide brushed it back and

forth in its methodical way.

“You have shamed me, Abigail,” said Hezekiah.




“Oh, Hezekiah, that was not my intention,” said Abigail.

“Of course, it was,” he said sadly. “You say you love me,

but you want to change me. You do not love me just the way

I am.”

“But I do,” she said, “I love your eyes with their hint of

blue, like the sea. I love your shoulders, so strong you could

carry me away. I even love your silly Coffin pride that makes

you think you can do anything you want in this world.”

“Silly Coffin pride?” he asked. “How dare you call it silly?

You wouldn’t be here now–none of us would be here now, in

fact, if it weren’t for my great, great grandfather Tristram.He founded this place.”

“Well,” said Abigail, “he didn’t found it all by himself.

With all his money, Tristram Coffin would have been wiped

out here if it had not been for my great, great grandfather

Peter Folger who taught him how to deal with the Indians.”

“The point is,” said Hezekiah, “that you shamed me

before the whole island. Now everybody thinks that youkilled that whale because I am afraid to go to sea and kill one

myself.”

“I only meant to shock Lydia,” Abigail said. “She is so

pious sometimes, thinking that things have to go her way

always and poor Nathaniel has to measure up to her

standards.”

“Poor Nathaniel?” said Hezekiah. “What about me? Atleast Nathaniel loves the seafaring life and wants to make his

way there. I have no love for it. Plenty of Coffins have

captained ships and plenty of Coffins have lost their lives out

there, so I have nothing to prove. Except to you.”

“I know,” Abigail said, “you love the land. You love

helping things grow, whether plants or lambs, and you are

good at it too. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” said Hezekiah. “I’m sorry that now I have

to leave all this, and you, and sign up on some stupid ship



B E I D L E R 7

just to prove that I can do this thing you have shamed me

into doing.”

“I just want us to have a good life,” said Abigail.

“You call it a good life with me gone for three years at a

time? You call it a good life with me being trapped on a

smelly ship with a bunch of barbarians? You call it a good

life for me to risk mine in order to take the life of another of

God’s creatures? Why, I can’t even kill a sheep.”

“I want a good house, Hezekiah,” said Abigail softly. “I

want rooms for our babies so they don’t have to grow up the

way I did, all the children piled into one freezing bed with nosheets. I want the neighbors to look up to me for once. I am

sick of their sideways glances, their condescending ways.

Once a Coleman, always a Coleman, they say, in that way of

theirs that makes it clear that being a Coleman is a very bad

thing indeed.”

“I know,” said Hezekiah, pulling her to him. “I know your

life has been hard. I want you to always be safe andcomfortable. When I hold you like this, I think that for you I

will do anything, even leave my sheep.”

And he did. Hezekiah left his sheep and went to sea. But

that is another story and not a happy one at all, at least not

in the end.

Abigail, sitting there beside Owen on the windy beach,

pulled her mind back to the present. There were a lot ofthings she was glad to forget by now. A widow for more than

twenty years, she should be accustomed to her quiet life. No

one to wait for now, except this boy sitting beside her who

wandered across the patch to visit her almost every day.

“Owen,” she said sharply to the boy digging little holes

with a shell in the sand, “Don’t you ever go to sea and hunt

the whales. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said, “but why?”




“Because it’s dangerous and I don’t want you to get hurt,”

Abigail said.

“Like Cousin Zacheus?” asked Owen in a somber voice.

“Yes, poor Zacheus,” said Abigail. “He was such a good

boy, and I told him not to go too. I even made him promise

me that he would never go to sea, but he went anyway and

now he’s dead, and nobody even knows where.”

“But all the men here go to sea, don’t they?” asked Owen.

“Most of them do, unfortunately,” said Abigail, “but not

all, not by any means. Somebody has to build the ships and

sell the ropes and hammer the harpoons and grow the cropsand make the shoes and teach the children in school and so

many other things.”

“I want to kill a whale,” said Owen, “so they won’t call me

a sissy. I’ll make you proud.”

“No, Owen,” Abigail almost shouted. “I will never let you

go. I won’t let the whale get you too. Not you.”

“Silly Grandma,” he said. “I’m not afraid of the whales.”“You don’t have to be afraid of them,” Abigail said, “but

you need to understand that some of them are very angry

with us, and one of them is very angry with me.”

“Why are they angry?” asked Owen.

“Because we hurt them,” Abigail said. “We chase them

and scare them and kill them when we can. We fill them

with spear holes and make them bleed to death and thencarve up their bodies and cook them for oil. They don’t like

that.”

“But whales don’t think,” said Owen. “They don’t think

and feel things like we do, do they?”

“Well, it seems to me they might,” said Abigail. “I only

know for sure about one whale, a very mean and nasty

whale, but according to her, whales are very much like us

and some of them would like to get rid of us all because they

think we are bad.”



B E I D L E R 9

“Are we bad?” asked Owen.

His grandmother seemed to hesitate. “Some of us do bad

things sometimes, I guess.”

“Killing people is bad,” Owen said. “But killing whales is

good. It makes us rich and famous.”

“I’m not so sure about that, Owen,” Abigail said. “But the

one thing I am sure about, very sure, is that you must never

go to sea.”

“Maybe I will go out but not kill any whales, just watch,”

said Owen.

“No, no,” said Abigail. “There are some things I knowand one thing I know is that something terrible will happen

to you if you go out on one of those Nantucket ships. She

told me so, and I forbid you to go.”

“Tell me the story,” he said, “about the whale who talked

to you. Only tell me all of it this time.”

“Well,” said Abigail softly, “I was walking one day out to

the point, as I liked to do. Your grandfather was at sea, and I was waiting for our first child, your father, to be born. I

liked to take long walks out there where I was almost

surrounded by the sea and somehow felt close to my

husband. Funny, I had thought I wanted him to go to sea

and then when he finally did, I just wanted him to come

home and stay with me and forget about whaling.”

“And what happened when you were on your walk to thepoint?” asked Owen.

“I remember it so clearly,” said Abigail, “just like it was

yesterday. I was standing out on the point with the water

crashing at my feet on the one side. I could see the vastness

of the silver sea reaching out to Africa or whatever faraway

land was way out there beyond. Yet when I turned my head

a little I could see the calmer water of the bay. And there I

saw her.”

“What did she look like?” asked Owen.





B E I D L E R 11

sorry if that baby was your son, but I was young and foolish

then and all that is over now. Leave me alone.” But Abigail

still could not seem to move away from the whale’s piercing

eye.

“I will come to collect,” said the whale. “Your baby for

mine, and as many as it takes. Now go.”

“I certainly will go,” I said, “and I will never come back to

this point again. You will never, ever get my baby!” And I

hurried down the beach, away from that narrow point that

stuck out into the sea, back toward the town where I knew

no whale could ever go.“Yet that whale called out to me, her voice so bitter and

loud. Something I have never told anybody, something that

scares me still,” Abigail said to Owen.

“What did she say?” Owen asked.

“She said that she would destroy all my sons, just as I had

destroyed her son,” said Abigail.

“But what does that have to do with me?” Owen asked.“My daddy was your son, not me.”

“I can’t talk about this any more, Owie,” she said. “It

breaks my heart what I did, but I won’t let that monster

punish you for it.”

Abigail pulled Owen to his feet, dusting the sand off his

legs. “I will race you to the dunes,” she said, pretending to

run very fast.“You know I will beat you,” the boy said, pretending not

to notice how his grandmother glanced over her shoulder

with that worried look.



Zimri Coffin

On this elbow of an island that was Nantucket, far enough

out in the Atlantic to keep people there once they settled

there, the Coffin name commanded respect. The Coffins had

been there a long time and there were a lot of them and they

still pretty much ran things.

It was early in the 1600s when Tristram, the first of theCoffins, came over from England. He was a successful

businessman, an entrepreneur, a developer, an investor, a

man who did not like to be told what to do, whether by the

king of England or by the bosses of the Massachusetts Bay

Colony. So Tristram and his wife Dionis and some friends

from Massachusetts bought this island of Nantucket. They

bought it from an Englishman who had bought it from theIndians and then they bought it again from the Indians just

to make sure the title was legal and clear.

And then they all settled there. The Macys and Starbucks

and Colemans and Gardners and Folgers and Barnards and

some more. In the middle of the seventeenth century, when

all of America was still a British colony, on this funny-

shaped little island way off the coast of Massachusetts, theysettled. Only wind and sand and Indians were already there.

But Tristram Coffin was the main man in this real estate

transaction. He had heard the old story about how the

island came to be. The story went that, long ago, a giant was

sleeping on Cape Cod and grew restless. Tossing and

turning, thrashing around on the beach, trying to get

comfortable somehow, he kicked out his feet and hismoccasins flew off into the Atlantic Ocean. One landed

pretty far away and became the island of Martha’s Vineyard,




and the other moccasin landed much farther away and that

one became the island of Nantucket.

The isolation and remoteness of this faraway island

suited Tristram and his friends just fine.

For one thing, they could be just as religious or as

unreligious out there as they chose to be, for there would be

no Puritans telling them just what to believe and how to

behave. And for another thing, they would need no fences

for their sheep out there. No wolves lived on the island to

bother the sheep, so the sheep could wander freely with only

the ocean for a fence to keep them where they belonged.Tristram soon enlisted the wise Peter Folger to help him

deal with the Indians in a respectful way, and the result was

that as the Europeans continued to clash with the native

peoples in America for more than another hundred years,

there was no place on this continent where the two cultures

lived in more harmony than on Nantucket. Until, of course,

the Indians disappeared, as usual, but because of disease,not because of war. And that was not exactly Tristram’s

fault.

Tristram just wanted to be lord of the manor again, to

have land to give to his sons and grandsons, to have his

children and their children living all around him for the rest

of his days. He did it. And on Nantucket he never had to go

to war and he never had to go to church.Then four or five generations later, along came Zimri.

Zimri was the great, great grandson of Tristram’s son

Stephen and also of Tristram’s son John, and also the great,

great, great grandson of Tristram’s son James and, along

another line, of Tristram’s daughter Mary. Zimri was also,

of course, after all that marrying and descending, related to

most of the other founding families of Nantucket too. But if

was of his Coffin name that Zimri was most proud.



B E I D L E R 15

By 1820, just about everybody on Nantucket was related

somehow, and many people were happy enough never to

think about their complicated family trees. Trees covered all

over with vines was more like it, and some people found that

troubling, all that intermarrying over and over again. But

not Zimri.

Zimri Coffin, captain of the Dauphin, a whaling ship that

cruised the South Pacific in search of sperm whales, sat one

spring day in his cabin talking to a reporter from an

Australian newspaper.

“Captain,” asked the man, “my name is Murphy and Ihave come to talk to you about the terrible thing that

happened to your poor cousin Owen.”

“Well, first of all, Mr. Murphy,” said Zimri, “Owen was

only my very distant cousin, sort of like most everybody on

Nantucket is. I barely knew the lad. And secondly, please

do not refer to him as poor. He was, after all, a Coffin.”

“Forgive me, sir,” said Murphy, “we all know about thepride of the Coffin clan. Still, it was a nasty business, their

eating him like that. It must make you very angry.”

“It makes me sad that they ate him, as you put it, yes,”

said Zimri. “And angry that no one seems to want to talk

about what really happened out there on that life boat.”

“I don’t understand you, Captain,” said Murphy. “You

rescued them. It was this very ship, the Dauphin, thatpulled the Essex survivors out of that life boat. And by now

the whole world has read the first mate’s account of that

rescue and of the harrowing weeks before. I know what

happened. Now I’m looking for some background

information. You know, some family angle that will help our

readers at home see Owen as a person, not just as a martyr

who gave his life so his shipmates could live.”

“He was no martyr,” said Zimri.

“So what was he like when he was a boy?” asked Murphy.




“He was always a boy,” said Zimri. “They murdered a

boy.”

“Murdered?” asked Murphy with surprise. “The First

Mate said they drew lots and that Owen accepted his fate

with great courage.”

“No, Mr. Murphy, the first mate was not present. He did

not know what happened on Owen’s boat because he was far

away, lost at sea on his own small boat. All the first mate

ever knew about Owen’s murder was what the captain told

him much later, long after the rescue. And the captain told

him the same version that he told us some time after wepulled his wretched body out of his life boat last February.”

“I hate to mention this, sir,” said Murphy, “but is it true

that when you pulled those two survivors out of the life boat,

they were sucking on human bones? Owen’s bones?”

“That is correct,” said Zimri. “The captain and the

Ramsdell boy were emaciated, covered with oozing sores.

They were filthy, huddled on the bottom of the boat, andgnawing on human bones. I called down to them, but they

just stared up at me with glazed eyes as if they had no

understanding of what was happening to them. I sent men

down to carry them up. I told the men to lift them very

gently, for I could see that these pitiful creatures were brittle

and weak. They were, I’m sad to say, less than human.

Their stringy hair, their infected eyes, their scabby hands.They seemed empty. To tell you the truth, I was a bit afraid

of them.”

Murphy hesitated, giving Zimri time. “Then Captain

Pollard began to recover rather quickly, I hear,” said

Murphy. “Later on did he tell you his story?”

“Oh, yes,” said Zimri. “He was most eager to talk about

the sinking of the Essex and the months floating around out

there on the Pacific Ocean. But I didn’t believe most of what

he told me.”



B E I D L E R 17

“Why not?” asked Murphy. “Captain Pollard has never

been accused of misconduct. Quite the contrary. He has

been assigned to another whaling ship and he will soon set

sail once again. Clearly the ship owners believe in him. Why

don’t you?”

“Because he changed his story. And because he obviously

cared more about his own reputation than he did about the

lives of his men,” said Zimri. “His ship ran into trouble the

first day out. Did Pollard take responsibility for the poor

judgment he used then? No. Nor did he ever take

responsibility for any of the even worse decisions he madelater on. It was crazy, once that whale had sunk the Essex , to

think for even a minute that they could head for the coast of

South America–almost three thousand miles away! So if he

would never take any responsibility for any of these

mistakes, how can I believe him when he tells me the four of

them drew lots?”

“But it is the custom of the sea, isn’t it,” asked Murphy.“For starving men to draw lots to see whose body should be

sacrificed so that the others may live?”

“It’s a myth,” said Zimri. “It has probably happened once

or twice, I don’t know, but it has not happened a lot of times

when men were stranded and starving. Yet it has become a

story that people like to believe. People are fascinated with

cannibalism, I guess, and there seems to be somethingromantic and terrible about a life boat full of hungry men

and one of them being eaten by the others. You talk about

the custom of the sea. It’s the custom of the sea that a

captain rules his ship. He is in charge, and nobody does

anything unless the captain tells him to. That is the custom

of the sea.”

“So, Captain Coffin,” asked Murphy, “what do you think

really happened on that life boat?”

“Something very ugly indeed,” said Zimri.



Nancy Bunker Coffin

She knew that people stared at her. They always had. It

made her look away, look down, and wish she were less

different than she was, wish with all her being that she

looked like other girls, sort of plain with a becoming feature

or two. Perhaps good hair. Some one good thing that people

could notice in passing, maybe even comment on politely,and then look on to someone else. Nancy often yearned to

be more forgettable.

But, no, nobody could forget poor Nancy Bunker. As a

toddler she had the curly hair that all the mothers wished

their children had. As a child she was thin and graceful

when it was the natural thing to be a bit thick and awkward.

And as a young woman she remained distant, moreinterested in reading stories about faraway places than in

plunging into Nantucket life. She was oddly beautiful,

people thought, but they wondered how anybody could be

beautiful who lived like that.

So they said hello and tried to be nice and resented that

she did not seem to appreciate their efforts. After all, it was

the thing to do to smile and get on with life, just as they did.It was the least Nancy Bunker could do, just smile back once

in a while.

But she seldom smiled. I hate the way they pity me,

thought Nancy. I hate the way they look at me and follow

me with their eyes. I can feel it, as I walk away from them,

trying to be quick, trying to stay busy, trying not to be rude.

But sometimes I want to be rude. I want to scream at themand tell them to sweep their own dirt and leave mine alone.

Oh, I know what they say, that Papa is a drunk, that he is




really the father of my sister’s baby, that poor Mama’s

bruises come from him. And me, they wonder what he does

to me. Well, let them wonder. There is only one person on

this wretched island whose opinion I give a hoot about and I

will save my words for him.

“That Nancy Bunker thinks she is too good for us, I

guess,” they sometimes said.

“But poor child, she suffers so, you know. Ah, what a

hard life she has at home with that old man. It’s a pity she

doesn’t marry someone and get out of that house of his.”

“Yes, it’s time. But who’d have her, living the way shelives?”

“She’s so pretty, though. You see the way the young men

look after her. Surely one of them will help her find a decent

life.”

“They’ll help her get with child, that’s what they’ll do. But

no Nantucket lad from a good family will marry a daughter

of Uriah Bunker.”“You mean you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“About the young man Nancy Bunker meets down by the

pond?”

“Who?”

“Young Hezekiah, the one they call Sonny. Captain

Hezekiah Coffin’s son. The Captain was such a good man. Apity that they lost him so young. And poor Abigail has had

quite a time with all those children he left her with, hasn’t

she.”

“Ah, yes. But if you are implying that Abigail’s Sonny is

fooling around with Nancy Bunker, all I can say is that

Abigail would never permit such behavior. After all she has

been through with her sons, she would never squander one

of them on a Bunker.”



B E I D L E R 21

“Well, Abigail may not always get her way. Goodness

knows she was headstrong enough in her day. It wouldn’t be

too surprising to see her Sonny get out of line now and

then”.

“Have you actually seen them together, then, Sonny and

Nancy?”

“I’ve seen their clothes”

“Good heavens, where?”

“I’ve never been one for gossip, as you know, and I

certainly would never want to be the one to point the finger,

but down by Keziah’s cave, where no one goes because of allthe bad spirits there, I saw some shameful things going on.”

“What were you doing down there then, besides spying on

the young folks?”

“Never you mind. Forget I ever said anything. I have no

idea what you are talking about.”

On such a day, Nancy Bunker walked home, the wind

swirling her dark hair around her handsome face, the sunfeeling strong and warm upon her back. She loved the

Nantucket air that could feel dry like a bake oven and at the

same time cause her to blink away an invisible wetness. She

loved the walk home, long as it was, for she seldom met

anyone out so far. It gave her time to think, to relax just a

bit. And to wonder, as she drew closer home, just what she

might find there today.Uriah Bunker’s house was small and poorly constructed,

as if it had been built in a great hurry by someone with the

good intentions of coming back later to do the job right. It

was a modest house, Uriah usually said, but people outside

the family were not always so kind. “It’s a dump,” they said.

“Somebody ought to do something about those Bunkers and

the disgusting way they live out there.”

Abigail Coffin’s voice was the loudest. “He’s trash,” she

said on more than one occasion. “It’s a sin the way Uriah





B E I D L E R 23

“What can’t be true?” she asked, fear bulging inside of

her.

“The things they are saying. The things they are saying in

town about you,” he said, reaching for his tonic.

“I don’t know what you mean, Papa,” Nancy said. “But

you know how people talk around here, and most of what

they say is wrong. They always mind everybody’s business

but their own, and when they don’t know what is really going

on, they make something up just to have something to say in

the butcher shop.”

“My Nancy,” he said, “you are the prettiest girl onNantucket.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” he asked angrily.

“With your looks you should be queen of England, queen of

France, queen of some place where our ancestors came

from.”

“I don’t want to be a queen,” she said.“Well, you will always be my queen,” he said, taking a

long drink.

“You have been drinking too much tonic again,” said

Nancy. “Why did your great grandfather you used to talk

about ever come over to this stupid island anyway? He

should have stayed over there in Europe or wherever he

came from because it couldn’t have been worse than thisplace.”

“Now, Nancy, I may be feeling poorly, but I still have my

wits about me and I will not have you malign my ancestor.

Your ancestor too, I might add. William Bunker risked his

life to cross that ocean in order to escape from all the

craziness and killing that was going on over there.”

“It seems to me that he brought the craziness right along

with him,” said Nancy.




“But not the killing,” said her father proudly. “We

Bunkers live in peace now on this Quaker island where

weapons are not permitted.”

“So, instead, they use words for weapons,” said Nancy

bitterly. “And whenever they like, they murder innocent

people with their vicious lies.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you are innocent, then?”

asked her father.

“Innocent of what?” she asked.

“Innocent of spending time alone with that Coffin boy?

Innocent of taking off all your clothes with him and lettinghim see your naked body?”

“We’re just friends,” said Nancy. “He’s the only friend I

have here. He’s the only one who doesn’t believe their lies

about you.”

“Never you mind what they say about me,” said her

father. “There’s some truth to it, we both know. Most gossip

is not entirely wrong. But I know and you know that I do the best I can to live up to my name.”

“What can there possibly be to live up to in the Bunker

name, Papa?” asked Nancy with surprise. “I have spent my

whole life wishing I were a Folger or a Macy or a Starbuck

even.” Carefully, she did not mention the Coffin name. “I’ve

always wished I had any other name but Bunker.”

“Nancy,” he shouted, “don’t you ever speak that way tome again! If I were a violent man, which thank goodness I’m

not, I would whip you within an inch of your life for that

sacrilege. Haven’t I told you, ever since you were a babe,

that the fine name of Bunker meant ‘good heart’ in French

and that our ancestors earned that honorable name over and

over?”

“I suppose,” said Nancy.

“You suppose?” said her father. “And those others whose

names you envy, like the high and mighty Coffins. What’s a



B E I D L E R 25

coffin, but a crude box for burying? Oh, I know, all they

seem to care about is what they own in this world, and they

own this island, but we own a name that means something

fine.”

“They still call you a no-good drunk, Papa,” said Nancy.

“They make up terrible things about you.”

“No matter,” he said, “I’m a Bunker.”

“But I won’t be a Bunker much longer,” said Nancy.

“You know, of course,” said her father, “that I’d never let

you marry a Coffin. I’d never let you stoop so low.”

“It’s not about stooping,” said Nancy. “It’s about loving.”“Bring this young man to me, then,” her father said. “I

need to know from his own mouth just what on this earth he,

an arrogant Coffin scum, thinks he has to offer my precious

Bunker daughter.”

“I could never bring Sonny here,” said Nancy sadly. “You

know that.”

Just then the curtain moved and Nancy’s mother cameinto the shed room. “Your father is unwell,” she said to her

daughter. “I don’t want you getting him upset.”

“I was just leaving,” said Nancy. “I have beans to pick

while there is still light.”

Uriah Bunker took a long drink of his tonic and fell

backwards again. “I won’t let her shame me before the

whole island,” he said to his wife.“How could she possibly shame you more than you have

already shamed yourself?” said his wife softly.

It was a good thing that Uriah was really not, as many

believed, a violent man. Or he might well have hurt this

wife, who was, after all, right there and the one he could

readily blame for his misery. But she walked away and did

not hear his fuming about the Coffins and how he would

rather have his daughter swallowed up by the sea than by

that Coffin clan.



Owen Coffin

I’m going to die, he thought. Out here. No one will know,

no one will remember. No one will be there to stop my

mother’s crying. No one will ever know that I was finally

getting it figured out, that things were just beginning to

make sense to me. And now this. This ocean is my whole

world and there is nothing else. It was all a dream that Iever walked on land and slept in my bed and tended my

roses. I didn’t even care about the whales. That whale that

rammed our ship was possessed, after something or

someone, but it couldn’t have been me, for I never wanted to

kill any thing. Not even the boys who teased me. I couldn’t

hurt them back, not even if I tried. But what good has it

done me to be forgiving, to be the gentle one, as mygrandmother always called me? No good. None of it

matters now. The waves get bigger and bigger. George

doesn’t know where we are, where we are going, how we got

here. Nobody knows, nobody cares. And I will die and they

will eat me just like we ate the others and then somebody

who is left will eat them and that’s it. No story, no

ceremony, no music, no remembering. That’s the worst. Ifonly somebody would remember that I lived.

Of course, my grandmother will remember me, but I dare

not let myself think of her. How angry she must be with me

now for disobeying her. Funny, I would give my life for my

grandma. Perhaps I am. She won’t see it that way, though.

“My Owen,” she’ll say. “My dear Owen. You were not like

the rest. Why did you have to go and leave me?”Owen laid his head back down in the puddle of sea water

that jostled in the bottom of the small life boat that had once




belonged to the fine whaling ship Essex . Salty and sweet

from human excrement, the water lapped at Owen’s lips. He

tried to slurp some. At least it was wet. But he was too tired

now, too tired even to swallow. His lips were cracked and

blistered. His throat burned, as if it were caked with flame.

It was hard to care any more. It was hard to tell what was

real and what was not. The only way out was for it all to

stop, however, whenever. Owen almost didn’t care.

“Look at you!” he thought he heard his grandmother’s

voice scolding him. “You look as if you have been through a

war. Come here to me and let’s get you cleaned up.” Hecould imagine his grandmother holding him close in spite of

the way his smelled and rubbing her face in his filthy hair

and telling him that everything would be all right now.

“Don’t hug so hard, Grandma,” he said out loud. “My

sores, they hurt so much when you touch me.”

“Now just don’t you worry, Owie dear,” she said calmly.

“You will feel better soon, I promise.”“Are you very angry with me?” Owen asked her in his

voice that would only whisper now.

“Yes,” she said softly. “If you weren’t already whipped

almost to death, I’d whip you a whole lot more for breaking

your promise to me and going to sea.”

“I never really promised,” said Owen.

“Well, it was the same as a promise,” said Abigail. “I told you what I told you to save you from just such a fate as this.

I told you the whole story that I never told anybody else

before or since and it didn’t even do you any good after all.

You turned out to be just as stubborn as the rest of them and

now it is almost more than I can bear.”

“I didn’t mean to disappoint you,” said Owen. He

thrashed around, desperate to make himself understood. Of

all the people he knew, before or since, it was the blessing of

this one old woman that he most yearned for.



B E I D L E R 29

Gently she brushed his greasy hair back from his face.

She smiled at the feeble beard growing around the scabs.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said to him. “You always were.”

He sobbed into her hands, but his weeping was without

tears out there in the leaking lifeboat, where day after day,

week after week, for more time than he could even count any

more, his body had spent all its fluids until it seemed he was

drying up inside now, even as his belly swelled with

emptiness. “I had to go,” he said. “I had to go even though I

was afraid.”

“Because of Charles, I suppose?” his grandmother saidsoftly. “Later some people said you two were fond of each

other. Is that why you left in spite of what the whale said?”

Charles. Kind and clever and knowing about lots of

things that Owen and the others who grew up their whole

time on that little island had never heard about. “Charles

was good to me,” he muttered.

Abigail shook her head. “I hate what has happened to you, Owie,” she said sadly. “I hate her for making it happen

and I hate that Charles for letting you be so foolish and I

hate that poor excuse of a captain for not protecting you.”

“Do you hate me too, Grandma?” asked Owen, trying to

tease her like he used to do, knowing, always knowing that

she, of all of them, would never for a single minute stop

seeing him as good and wonderful and magnificent.“Not you, Owie. Never could I hate you, as you well

know. I understand, I think. You had to go and if you had to

go, you had to go. Loving somebody is a curious thing and I

of all people should know about that. Why it’s my crazy

loving, if you think about it, that got us all into this mess in

the first place.”

“I don’t know if I really love him, Grandma,” said Owen.

“Sometimes I think I do. Most times. But then when he

turns away like he does and seems not to even see me, I get




scared that I will lose him and then I hate myself for not

being what he wants.”

“It’s not just about what he wants,” said Abigail. “It’s

about what you want too. Don’t you want to settle down

with a nice wife back on Nantucket and make me some little

great grandbabies to spoil? Then they could come running

across the patch just like you used to do and help me build

the fire and pick the berries and taste the cookie dough?”

“I’m not the right kind of man for a wife, I guess,” said

Owen. “But I would sure learn how to live with one if I could

just get out of this mess. We haven’t eaten for days and thenit was only strips of stinking human flesh from those who

died first. We are surrounded by water, yet we have not a

drop to drink. I gag, but nothing comes up. I’m too weak to

stand. And we know we have been out here for a very long

time, but we don’t know where we are.”

“You are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” said his

grandmother, “bobbing about in your broken boat with twoother sick boys who are pretending to be men and one sick

captain who is apparently a grown man but doesn’t know

how to act like one.”

Owen was fading in and out, not sure what was real and

what was wishing, but he had to ask her, for he knew that

she would always give him a straight answer. “Grandma, do

you think there is any way I can get out of this alive?” heasked.

Abigail looked away. “Your mother misses you,” she said.

“But you didn’t answer my question, Grandma,” Owen

said.

“And your sister, she’s no better. It’s a hard life she has,

never having her health be what it should be,” said Abigail.

“Grandma?” asked Owen. “Please be honest with me.”

“And your little brother,” said Abigail. “That rascal’s

always down at the water. Some days he doesn’t even come



B E I D L E R 31

home to eat. I’ve not even bothered to tell him about what

the whale said, for I know he would never listen. He can’t

even sit still, that boy,” said Abigail.

“I miss them,” said Owen.

They were quiet together, both of them looking down at

the other end of the leaking life boat that was all that stood

between the four men and the huge Pacific. The other three

looked just as grotesque and distorted as Owen felt he

looked. As the world looked. His grandmother held him

tightly, not wanting to let him go. “No,” she whispered,

“there is no way.”“How much longer do I have?” Owen asked his

grandmother.

“Just close your eyes now, Owie, and let me tell you about

your roses back home. I have been tending them ever since

you left. The red orange one that climbs along the fence

needed cutting back, and I covered them all with seaweed

down by the roots. It has been a hard winter, but I thinkthey will all make it through till spring.”

“Do you think I will go quickly?” he asked her.

“That depends,” she said.

“On what?” he asked.

“On who uses that gun,” she said quietly.

Documents

Eating Owen: The imagined true story of four Coffins from Nantucket: Abigail, Nancy, Zimri, and Owen