The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

“Taps for the Prince of Tides. Dogs to my birthday party. Come to live in the white house, the marshes are never safe. Black dog not related to tigers. Daddy get the camera. Daddy get the camera. The dogs are roaming in packs. Three men are coming down the road. Callanwolde. Callanwolde. Out of the woods of Callanwolde and up to house on Rosedale Road. Taps for the Prince of Tides. The brother’s mouth is not safe. The marsh is never safe. The shrimp are running, the shrimp are running, the dogs are running. Caesar. Red pins and gardenias. Now. Now. The giant and Coca-Cola. Bring the tiger to the back door. Play Dixie for the seals. A root for the dead men by the crow. Do you hear someone, Mother? The graves are talking again. Someone outside? Someone pretty, Mother. The snow is stolen from the river and someone prettier than me, Mother. How many angels dropped from the womb bloomed into ugliness in springtime? Where is fruit and Grandpa is cross. Stop the boat. Please stop the boat. I’m going to be with you for a very long time. Hurt you. Promise I will hurt you. Hurt the tiger man. Hurt the tiger man. Kill the tiger man. Stop the boat. Where is Agnes Day?” When I finished reading I said,

“Is there a part of you that hates women, Tom?” she asked, leaning toward me. “Really hates them?” “Yes,” I answered, matching the dark intensity of her stare. “Do you have any idea why you hate women?” she asked, again the unruffled professional, dauntless in her role. “Yes, I know exactly why I hate women. I was raised by a woman. Now ask me the next question. The next logical question.” “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” “Ask me if I hate men, New York feminist doctor,” I said. “Ask me if I hate fucking men.” “Do you hate men?” she asked. “Yes,” I replied. “I hate men because I was raised by a man.”

In happy times, love poured out of me like bright honey from a stolen hive. But in times of hurt and loss I withdrew into a self-made enclosure of impenetrable solitude, and the women who tried to touch me there—all of them—drew back in utter horror as I wounded them again and again for daring to love me when I knew my love was all corruption. I was one of those men who killed their women slowly. My love was a form of gangrene withering the soft tissues of the soul.

Don’t you think I’ve learned from our own failures? Look at me. What am I? Nothing. Nothing at all. A shrimper’s wife without a dime, living in a tiny house on an island. Don’t you think I know what they think about me and how they look at me? But I will not let them win.”

I’m an American, Lila. A simple, shit-kicking American out trying to make a buck. I like American food—steaks, potatoes, shrimp, okra, corn, that kind of shit. I don’t like snails or caviar or frog livers or dragonfly balls or any of that other crap the French jack off about. I don’t want an adventure in food, honey. I just want to eat. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

Whenever I am angry, my displeasure is written in code on my mouth in a thin-lipped, downturned crescent. I have perfect control of the rest of my face but my mouth is the renegade that broadcasts my vexation and wrath to the outside world. Friends who have mastered the art of reading my mouth can chart the emotional weather of my soul with uncanny accuracy.

In her hour of greatest triumph, when all honors and kudos and riches had accrued to her at last, when she had proven to all that we had underestimated her value and importance, my father went to prison in a last grand gesture to win her admiration and they brought my mother the head of her oldest son on a plate. It would be my mother’s destiny to know the dust, and not the savor, of answered prayers.