There is a moment’s delay and a slight echo of his own voice before Deidre finally answers, “I’m hungry.”
“Well, tell Mommy to fix you a sandwich.” “I did already.” “Do you miss me?”
“Yes. Come home and watch me dance.”
“I will soon. I love you.”
Toby says “Hi.”
“How’s school,” Adams asks.
“Fine.”
“You taking care of your sister?”
“I’m trying not to bug her.”
“I’m going to bring you something special.”
“Great.”
Pamela comes on the line. “Take care of yourself, Sam.”
“I will. Anything you need?”
“A straitjacket for Toby.” She laughs. “Otherwise everything’s smooth.”
“I’ll call again as soon as I can. They don’t give us much time on this thing.” (Conversations must be as brief as possible, and messages must be truthful, according to the manual.)
Adams overhears Carol talking to a young man in Austin, Texas. “Remember the Willie Nelson concert when you took off your shirt?”
He wishes he knew guitar. It’s hard to play Willie Nelson on a practice pad.
“Have you heard noises at night?” They are sitting on Carol’s bunk.
“I sleep like a baby at sea. What kind of noises?”
“Like cats, close to the hull. But I can’t locate them.”
“Maybe your bunk’s near a stress point.” She lowers the kerosene lamp.
“Tell me about your friend in Austin.”
Carol lies back on the bunk. “We lived together for a while. His name is Jack,‘ she says. “Neither one of us wanted to settle down, really. We agreed to see other people, he moved out.”
“And?”
“I don’t know.” She sits up on one elbow. “I’m jealous of the women he meets. And the men I’ve gone out with may as well have died in a war or something. I think, sometimes, a whole generation of American men has been ruined. They say the first World War wiped out every English boy between seventeen and thirty — well, that’s how it feels. Like nuns have been sending brain waves out to all the men in the country, fucking them up forever.”
“What’s wrong with them? Us?”
“You’re always running. I swear, the business world is full of these asexual men living by the clock, putting all their energy into contracts and torts and things. I mean, careers are important and all, but there’s an inordinate number of guys out there whose lives are nothing but careers. And I think a lot of men are turning gay because they’re fucked up about women.”
“You’re not serious.”
Carol shrugs. “Something’s going on. They couldn’t handle Women’s Lib or Vietnam or something. American men are just wimps.”
“Was Jack a wimp?”
“He couldn’t make a commitment. But then neither could I, I’m not being fair. It’s just that … my feelings are hurt.” Adams rubs her neck. “I feel rejected when I want to feel enjoyed.”
Adams smooths her dark hair (she is fragrant), holds his lips against her temple. “I’m over forty,” he says. “I’m fucked up, but maybe in different ways than you’re used to.”
Carol smiles. He holds her breast. “Not so hard,” she whispers. They rock with the motion of the ship. She has opened the port above her bunk and soon their hair is glistening with salt spray.
Carol’s hips are narrow — he feels that he will break her. “It’s okay,” she says, pulling him closer against her. She wets the tip of a finger and rubs his nipple. Her touch is so light he can barely feel it, yet he is tingling in his shoulder, all the way down to his elbow, where a pool of sensation has him frozen. They are awkward with each other, out of synch. He begins to think of Pamela, Jill … but Carol is a surprising lover. She becomes daring, excited when he least expects it, gripping the base of his neck, pulling him down. Before they are through, she has brought him back to her.
He is twelve years Carol’s senior, Mesozoic to her Paleozoic, Cretaceous, reptilian, seed-bearing, of relatively short duration, whereas she is Carboniferous, amphibian, seaweed and spore, full of new life testing its legs. If they grow together they will never be together. Her Shepherd Kings will just be setting up shop in northern Egypt while his Joan of Arc is being burned at the stake. In the night she reaches for him with affection and assurance.
Icebergs: yellow mist, yellow ocean. The wooden rigging of Desire Provoked looks yellow in the fog. Adams sips hot yellow tea, leans against the railing. A giant slab of ice breaks the mist, water lapping its base. To the port side another slab, then another, like one-story office buildings. Their movements are abrupt, broken by the sea. Quietly Desire Provoked slides past them, its sails lax and yellow.
When Adams and Carol make love, they stroke each other carefully. Their hands are rough from handling rope. Twice a day they are asked to assist the regular crew in raising and lowering sails. The ropes are smooth and white, made of polyester fibers, but burn when tugged through the hand. Gloves don’t help much. To keep the ropes from chafing, the crew has wrapped them in pieces of leather or split pieces of garden hose.
Adams has learned the eight essential knots that every seaman needs: the figure eight, the square knot, the sheet bend, the bowline, the clove hitch, the doublehalf hitch, the fisherman’s hitch, and the rolling hitch. In the evenings, when the wind is steady, Adams’ task is to tie the jib sheets to the clew, accelerating ship’s speed. Adams gazes at the sails. They are beautiful white surfaces, curved with the wind. He remembers Deidre sticking her arm out the car window (a habit he tried to break). When she held her palm flat, her arm was forced straight back, but when she cupped her hand, she felt less stress. Desire Provokeďs sails work on the same principle. He imagines maps painted on the canvas, vivid colors pointing home.
“Magnetic north is located at about seventy-six degrees north, a hundred and one degrees west,” the helmsman explains. “It’s not the same as true north, which lies almost directly beneath the polestar, so we’ve got to make adjustments. I prefer old-fashioned potato navigation myself. You toss the potatoes ahead of the ship as you go. When you don’t hear a splash, you turn the son-of-a-bitch fast.”
One of the engineers manages to collect small sections of an iceberg as Desire Provoked, in still waters, floats by. Adams takes a piece about the size of a golf ball, and with bright red colors draws on it the petals of a flower. After supper he presents it to Carol. She holds it in her palm, and slowly they watch the flower melt.
In 1613 William Baffin piloted one of seven ships fitted out by the Muscovy Trading Company, and traveled to Spitsbergen to fish and whale.
From Baffin’s journaclass="underline" “Upon this land there be manie white beares, graie foxes, and great plentie of deare; and also white partridges, and great store of white fowle, wilde geese, sea pigeons … and divers others, whereof some are unworthy of naming as taste-ing. The land also doth yield much drift wood, whales finnes … and some times unicorn homes.”
Adams sets the journal down. He shivers, lights the kerosene lamp, pulls on his parka. He can smell his breath. Fumes from the lamp warm his throat.
He picks up the journal again: “Theise things the sea casteth forth upon the shoare, to supplie unreasonable creatures on the fruitless land, the country being altogether destitute of necessaries wherewithal a man might be preserved in time of winter.”
Something’s tearing the hull. He gets up, explores the hold, but cannot locate the noise. It seems general, throughout the area belowdecks. The following morning, when he reports to the ship’s skipper, he’s given the standard line: “You’ll get used to the noises at sea.”