Collection 1980 - Yondering Read online

  He looked pretty small and pitiful, lying there in the mud mingled with the debris left by an outgoing tide. Once in a while even yet, I think of how he looked, lying there on that stinking mud flat under a low, clouded sky, with a background of lumberyard and trestle. There was mud on the side of his face, and a spot on his nose. His long fingers were relaxed and helpless, but somehow there wasn’t a thing about him that looked out of place. We stood there looking at him a minute, and none of us said anything, but I was thinking: “Well, you were afraid of it, and here it is—now what?”

  We left him there and said nothing to anybody. Later, Red saw them down there picking him up but didn’t go near, so we never knew what the coroner thought of it, if anything. I often wonder what happened when that ferry went down. She was hit hard and must have sunk like a rock, with probably fifty or sixty people aboard. It was Snipe’s big chance to be a hero, him being such a good swimmer. But there he was.

  As I said to Sharkey, it was a hell of a place to be found dead.

  SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME

  * * *

  IT WAS THE night the orchestra played “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” the night the fleet sailed for Panama. The slow drizzle of rain had stopped, and there was nothing but the play of searchlights across the clouds, the mutter of the motors from the shore boats, and the spatter of grease where the man was frying hamburgers on the Fifth Street landing. I was standing there with a couple of Greek fishermen and a taxi driver, watching the gobs say good-bye to their wives and sweethearts.

  There was something about the smell of rain, the sailors saying good-bye, and the creak of rigging that sort of got to you. I’d been on the beach for a month then.

  A girl came down to the landing and leaned on the rail watching the shore boats. One of the gobs waved at her, and she waved back, but didn’t smile. You could see that they didn’t know each other; it was just one of those things.

  She was alone. Every other girl was with somebody, but not her. She was wearing a neat, tailored suit that was a little worn, but she had nice legs and large, expressive eyes. When the last of the shore boats was leaving she was still standing there. Maybe it wasn’t my move, but I was lonely, and when you’re on the beach you don’t meet many girls. So I walked over and leaned on the rail beside her.

  “Saying good-bye to your boyfriend?” I asked, though I knew she wasn’t.

  “I said good-bye to him a long time ago.”

  “He didn’t come back?”

  “Do they ever?”

  “Sometimes they want to and can’t. Sometimes things don’t break right.”

  “I wonder.”

  “And sometimes they do come back and things aren’t like they were, and sometimes they don’t come back because they are afraid they won’t be the same, and they don’t want to spoil what they remember.”

  “Then why go?”

  “Somebody has to. Men have always gone to sea, and girls have waited for them.”

  “I’m not waiting for anybody.”

  “Sure you are. We all are. From the very beginning we wait for somebody, watch for them long before we know who they are. Sometimes we find the one we wait for, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes the one we wait for comes along and we don’t know it until too late. Sometimes they ask too much and we are afraid to take a chance, and they slip away.”

  “I wouldn’t wait for anyone. Especially him. I wouldn’t want him now.”

  “Of course not. If you saw him now, you’d wonder why you ever wanted him. You aren’t waiting for him, though—you’re waiting for what he represented. You knew a sailor once. Girls should never know men who have the sea in their blood.”

  “They always go away.”

  “Sure, and that’s the way it should be. All the sorrow and tragedy in life come from trying to make things last too long.”

  “You’re a cynic.”

  “All sentimentalists are cynics, and all Americans are sentimentalists. It’s the Stephen Foster influence. Or too many showings of ‘Over the Hill to the Poorhouse’ and ‘East Lynne.’ But I like it that way.”

  “Do people really talk like this?”

  “Only when they need coffee. Or maybe the first time a girl and a man meet. Or maybe this talk is a result of the saying good-bye influence. It’s the same thing that makes women cry at the weddings of perfect strangers.”

  “You’re a funny person.” She turned to look at me.

  “I boast of it. But how about that coffee? We shouldn’t stand here much longer. People who lean on railings over water at night are either in love or contemplating suicide.”

  We started up the street. This was the sort of thing that made life interesting—meeting people. Especially attractive blondes at midnight.

  Over the coffee she looked at me. “A girl who falls in love with a sailor is crazy.”

  “Not at all. A sailor always goes away, and then she doesn’t have time to be disillusioned. Years later she can make her husband’s life miserable telling him what a wonderful man so-and-so was. The chances are he was a fourteen-carat sap. Only he left before the new wore off.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “Very rarely. I know all the rules for handling women. The trouble is that at the psychological moment I forget to use them. It’s depressing.”

  “It’s getting late. I’m going to have to go home.”

  “Not alone, I hope.”

  She looked at me again, very coolly. “You don’t think I’m the sort of girl you can just pick up, do you?”

  “Of course not,” I chuckled. “But I wished on a star out there. You know that old gag.”

  She laughed. “I think you’re a fool.”

  “That cinches it. Women always fall in love with fools.

  “You think it is so easy to fall in love as that?”

  “It must be. Some people fall in love with no visible reason, either material, moral, or maternal. Anyway, why should it be so complicated?”

  “Were you ever in love?”

  “I think so. I’m not exactly sure. She was a wonderful cook, and if the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, this was a case of love at first bite.”

  “Do you ever take anything seriously?”

  “I’m taking you seriously. But why not have a little fun with it? There’s only one thing wrong with life: people don’t love enough, they don’t laugh enough—and they are too damned conventional. Even their love affairs are supposed to run true to form. But this is spontaneous. You walk down where the sailors are saying good-bye to their sweethearts because you said good-bye to one once. It has been raining a little, and there is a sort of melancholy tenderness in the air. You are remembering the past, not because of him, because his face and personality have faded, but because of the romance of saying good-bye, the smell of strange odors from foreign ports, the thoughts the ocean always brings to people—romance, color, distance. A sort of vague sadness that is almost a happiness. And then, accompanied by the sound of distant music and the perfume of frying onions, I come into your life!”

  She laughed again. “That sounds like a line.”

  “It is. Don’t you see? When you went down to the landing tonight you were looking for me. You didn’t know who I was, but you wanted something, someone. Well, here I am. The nice part of it is, I was looking for you.”

  “You make it sound very nice.”

  “Why not? A man who couldn’t make it sound nice while looking at you would be too dull to live. Now finish your coffee and we’ll go home.”

  “Now listen, I…”

  “I know. Don’t say it. But I’ll just take you to the door, kiss you very nicely, and close it.”

  * * *

  THERE HAD BEEN another shower, and the streets were damp. A fog was rolling from the ocean, the silent mist creeping in around the corners of the buildings, encircling the ships to the peaks of their masts. It was a lonely, silent world where the street lights floated in ghostly radiance.

&
nbsp; “You were wondering why men went to sea. Can’t you imagine entering a strange, far-eastern port on such a night as this? The lights of an unknown city—strange odors, mysterious sounds, the accents of a strange tongue? It’s the charm of the strange and the different, of something new. Yet there’s the feeling around you of something very old. Maybe that’s why men go to sea.”

  “Maybe it is, but I’d never fall in love with another sailor.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  We had reached the door. She put her key in the lock, and we stepped in. It was very late, and very quiet. I took her in my arms, kissed her goodnight, and closed the door.

  “I thought you said you were going to say good-night, and then go?” she protested.

  “I said I was going to kiss you goodnight, and then close the door. I didn’t say on which side of it I’d be.”

  “Well…”

  The hell of it was my ship was sailing in the morning.

  THICKER THAN BLOOD

  * * *

  One shipped out of San Pedro in those days through what was called the Marine Service Bureau. Less politely, the seamen referred to it as Fink Hall or the Slave Market. Upon arrival in port it was customary to register there and wait one’s turn. At the time that was about three months. However, when I did leave San Pedro, it was by taking what the old wind-ship sailors used to call a “pierhead jump.” I shipped off the dock.

  The Seaman’s Institute maintained a dormitory for seamen ashore, a reading room, a game room, and a mailing address. Some of the best checker playing I ever saw was done there. On Wednesday nights there was entertainment.

  When I arrived at the Institute on that last night, none of the regulars was around. It was damp and cold outside, and I had but five cents in my pocket. Turning a newspaper to the shipping lists, I started checking to see what ships were arriving and where they were bound.

  A stranger loomed over me, asking, “What’s the best way to get to Wilmington at this hour?”

  “Walk,” I said, “unless you’ve money enough for a cab.” I explained the best route. “But watch yourself. If you’ve got two dimes, don’t let them rattle or you’ll get rolled for them.”

  “I’ve got a ship. They’re coming in to take on fuel oil, and they radioed ahead for an able seaman.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “Why not come along? They might need another man.”

  It was worth the gamble, and I’d no place to go and no place to sleep.

  It was a dark night with a light drizzle veiling the lights on the Luckenbach dock across the channel. I took turns carrying his sea bag, as I’d none of my own. If I did ship out, I’d have to buy my outfit from the ship’s slop chest.

  The ship was a freighter outward bound for the Far East, and it was due in at midnight. We were a few minutes late, but it had not arrived. We sat down under the eaves of the warehouse to wait, and it was after four in the morning before we finally saw it, creeping up the channel.

  We went aboard and were signed on in the chief mate’s cabin with the only light the reading lamp over his desk. I had no idea what I was getting into, but it made no difference. I was broke, and this was a job.

  That ship was to be my home for the next six months, and before I arrived back in the States, I’d have been to Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and various ports in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and the Malay States as well as Singapore. With stops here and there we went on around the world to finally pay off in Brooklyn.

  * * *

  HE HAD IT coming if ever a man did, and I could have killed him then and nobody the wiser. If he had been man enough, we could have gone off on the dock and slugged it out, and everything would have been settled either way the cat jumped. There’s nothing like a sock on the chin to sort of clean things up. It saves hard feelings and time wasted in argument. But Duggs was the chief mate, who wasn’t man enough to whip me and knew it.

  Bilge water, they say, is thicker than blood, and once men have been shipmates, no matter how much they hate each other’s guts, they stand together against the world. That’s the way it is supposed to be, but it certainly wasn’t going to be that way with Duggs and me. I decided that in a hurry.

  From the hour I shipped on that freighter, Duggs made it tough for me, but it wasn’t only me but the whole crew. You don’t mind so much if a really tough guy makes you like it, but when a two-by-twice scenery bum like Duggs rubs it into you just because he has the authority, it just naturally hurts.

  If we’d gone off on the dock where it was man to man, I’d have lowered the boom on his chin and left him for the gulls to pick over. But we were aboard ship, and if you sock an officer aboard ship, it’s your neck.

  Sometimes I think he laid awake nights figuring ways to be nasty, but maybe he didn’t have to go to that much effort. I suspect it just came naturally. He made it rough for all of us but particularly me. Not that I didn’t have my chances to cool him off. I had three of them. The first was at sea, the second in Port Swettenham, and the third—well, you’ll hear about that.

  Every dirty job he could find fell to Tony or me, and he could think of more ways to be unpleasant without trying than you could if you worked at it. Unless you have been at sea, you can’t realize how infernally miserable it can become. There are a thousand little, insignificant things that can be done to make it miserable. Always something, and it doesn’t have to be anything big. Often it is the little things that get under your skin, and the longer it lasts, the worse it gets.

  Of course, the food was bad, but that was the steward’s fault. Curry and rice and fried potatoes for three straight weeks. That was bad enough, but Duggs kept finding work for us to do after we were off watch. Emergencies, he called them, and you can’t refuse duty in an emergency. There were men aboard that ship who would have killed Duggs for a Straits dollar. Me, I’m an easygoing guy, but it was getting to me.

  One morning at four o’clock I was coming off watch. It was blowing like the bull of Barney, and a heavy sea running. Duggs had just come on watch, and he calls to me to go aft with him and lend a hand. The log line was fouled. Back we went, and the old tub was rolling her scuppers under, with seas breaking over her that left you gasping like a fish out of water, they were that cold.

  We reeled in the log line, hand over hand, the wind tearing at our clothes, the deck awash. He did help some, I’ll give him that, but it was me who did the heavy hauling, and it was me who cleared the little propeller on the patent log of seaweed and rope yarns.

  Right there was the perfect opportunity. Nobody would have been surprised if we’d both been washed over the side, so it would have been no trick to have dumped him over the rail and washed my hands of him. Duggs had on sea boots and oilskins, and he would have gone down quick.

  I finished the job, tearing skin from my hands and getting salt into the raw wounds, the ship plunging like a crazy bronco in a wild and tormented sea. Then, in the moment when I could have got him and got him good, he leaned over and shouted to be heard above the wind, “There! I’m sure glad I managed to get that done!”

  And I was so mad I forgot to kill him.

  The next time was in Port Swettenham. Duggs knew I had a girl in Singapore, but instead of letting me go ashore, he put me on anchor watch. All night long I stood by the rail or walked the deck, looking at the faroff lights of town and cussing the day I shipped on a barge with a louse-bound, scupper-jumping, bilge-swilling rat for mate. And my girl was ashore expecting me—at least, I hoped she was.

  We sailed from Singapore, called at Baliwan and Penang, and finally we crawled up the river to Port Swettenham.

  It was hot and muggy. Keeping cool was almost impossible, and I had only two changes of clothes for working. One of them I managed to keep clean to wear off watch; the other was stiff with paint and tar. When time allowed I’d wash the one set and switch. The mate deliberately waited one day until I’d changed into clean clothes, and then he called me.

 
; We were taking on some liquid rubber, and down in the empty fuel-oil tank in the forepeak was a spot of water about as big as a pie plate. He told me to climb down fifteen feet of steel ladder covered with oil slime and sop up that water. Aside from being a complete mess before I’d reached the bottom, there was almost an even chance I’d slip and break a leg.

  Forward we went together, then down in the fore-peak, and stopped by the manhole that let one into the tank. He held up his flashlight, pointing out that dime’s worth of water. I had a steel scraper in my hand, and when he leaned over that manhole, I thought what a sweet setup that was.

  I could just bend that scraper over his head, drop him into the tank, put the hatch cover on, then go on deck and give them the high sign to start pumping rubber. There’d be a fuss when the mate turned up missing, but they’d never find him until they emptied the tank, and if I knew the old man, I knew he’d never pump the rubber out of that tank for a dozen mates. And just then Chips stuck his head down the hatch and yelled for Duggs.

  Time passed, and we tied up in Brooklyn. I drew my pay and walked down the gangway to the dock. Then I turned and looked back.

  From beginning to end that voyage had been plain, unadulterated hell, yet I hated to leave. When a guy lives on a ship that long, it begins to feel like home no matter how rough it is, and I had no other.

  Six months I’d sailed on that packet, good weather and bad. Around the world we’d gone and in and out of some of the tiniest, dirtiest ports in the Far East. I’d helped to paint her from jack staff to rudder and stood four hours out of every twenty-four at her wheel across three oceans and a half-dozen seas. She was a scummy old barge, but as I stood there looking back, I had to cuss just to keep from feeling bad. Then I walked away.