Be careful out there!
Fourteen
Governor Crimm had been studying the latest Trooper Truth printout for an entire hour, and was fascinated, appalled, and disgusted by it. He repeatedly moved his magnifying glass over every word as Major Trader briefed him on matters of state and offered him a homemade chocolate-covered cherry.
“General Assembly will start up before we know it,” Trader was saying. “And we’re simply not prepared.”
“You always say that,” the governor replied as he absently ate the candy. “Who did shoot J.R., anyway? Has anybody pressed the archaeologists about this? And if not, why not? How do you think it makes us look if we can’t solve a crime that was committed four hundred years ago and was certainly witnessed? I want you to call Jamestown and demand that the J.R. case be solved immediately, and we’ll issue a big press release and show the citizens of Virginia that I will not tolerate crime.”
“Juvenile crime,” Trader added a helpful spin.
“Yes, yes,” the governor agreed.
‘And I think we can safely suggest he was shot by a pirate–or it might be in our best interest to claim as much, at any rate,” Trader added. “We could say it was any pirate–doesn’t matter, don’t you see? All pirates were bad then and are bad now, so it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever if we propose that J.R. wandered outside the fort to get a bucket of water from the river, and all of a sudden he spied a Spanish ship flying a Jolly Roger flag, and next thing he was shot.”
“I thought we were avoiding drawing attention to our pirate problems.”
“Highway pirates are another matter,” Trader replied as he gloated over his secret pirate activities that would soon enough make him rich from booty.
Crimm stopped the magnifying glass on the word cannibal. “Imagine some settler salting down his dead wife and eating her,” he said in revulsion as he envisioned himself dying of starvation, only to discover his voluptuous wife had passed away.
He thought of her nude, fleshy body and wondered how anybody could eat his wife without at least cooking her first, but he supposed if he cooked Maude, the other settlers would see the smoke and smell the odor of roasting human flesh and would hang him from a tree. Oh, what a hideous scenario, and the governor’s submarine lurched and banged into something, sending a painful jolt through his hollow organs.
“That was a capital crime back then,” Trader observed as if he were reading Crimm’s mind. “The tour guides at Jamestown will tell you that anyone caught eating his wife or anybody else was immediately dragged off and hanged. Then they’d bury him very quickly and in a secret location so another settler didn’t salt and eat him, too.”
“I’m wondering if cannibalism is still a capital crime, because if it isn’t, it ought to be.” Crimm’s submarine lurched more violently.
“It depends on the circumstances,” Trader replied as he imagined his plump, nagging wife and wondered if he could ever be famished enough to consider, even for a moment, eating her, assuming she died unexpectedly and nobody else noticed that she had vanished. “For example, according to state code, there would have to be another serious crime involved,” Trader explained. “If the man murdered her first and perhaps included a rape or robbery and then ate her–now that would be a capital offense and he would get lethal injection, unless you blocked the execution or granted clemency.”
“I never block executions or grant clemency,” the governor impatiently replied as his lens strayed over the printed essay and another shockwave rolled through him. “In fact, I want you to send out a press release and announce that anyone who engages in cannibalism will pay the supreme price, assuming those other crimes are included. I don’t believe we’ve ever addressed cannibalism, and it’s high time we did. Indeed, let’s draft a bill and put it before this next General Assembly.”
Trader was making notes with a pencil, which was his habit because he often found the need to erase whatever he had written.
“Maybe we should say that J.R. was caught in the act of cannibalism and was executed by a firing squad. How about that?” The governor peered up and gave Trader a magnified rheumy eye that was cloudy and bloodshot and getting glassy.