Belowdeck had a warmth due to more than the sun streaming through the skylights; painted ivory with varnished teak trim, the big main cabin had built-in upper and lower bunks on either side. Down the middle was an endless teakwood table where, between meals, cards were played, books were read, letters written. In the forward galley, Fritz the cook (one of the few crew members getting paid) made the most of powdered milk, canned butter, and wax-coated eggs. Lunch was particularly memorable — turtle stew with curry, baked beans, fried onions, and johnnycakes.
Watching these young people work and play was a reminder of life’s little pleasures. Johnson’s wife, Electa, Exy to one and all, was a compact curvy blue-eyed blonde in a blue-and-white-striped top and blue shorts, and who could blame Johnson for running off to sea in her company? She spent much of her time with her two young sons, a two-year-old and a four-year-old, who nimbly navigated the deck, balancing on forebooms, bouncing on sails.
“They’re fearless,” I said to her.
Exy’s smile was a dazzler. “The Yankee’s their home. They never lived anywhere else... You’re in their back yard.”
The two kids had their own cabin below, down the hall from the Captain and Mrs. Johnson’s cabin, the engine room and bathroom. There was also a double stateroom for Betsy and Dorothy, who may just have been two more of the “boys” on this trip but nonetheless did not make use of the main cabin’s dormlike bunks.
I had been assigned my own bunk, for my one night aboard the Yankee, six and a half feet long by three feet wide, thirty inches between my thin mattress and the slats of the bunk overhead. The wall next to me was bookshelves, as was the case with every bunk, and the main cabin had an entire wall devoted to books. This was a well-read, and often-reading, crew, reflecting the hours they had to kill, and their good breeding.
The ship’s first mate, Hayden, a tow-headed, long-legged, sinewy middle-class kid from New Jersey, twenty or so, passed along the skipper’s orders with an offhanded ease. Sometimes, seasoned sailor that he was, he seemed to be acting as an interpreter between Johnson and the rich kids playing sailor. Of course, some of these “kids” were in their late twenties and early thirties. The wealthy crew included a doctor, a photographer, a radio expert, and a guy who knew his way around the ship’s diesel engine. Even so, Hayden had the respect and obedience of them all.
The young man had a serious mien but an explosive smile, and was devoted to Johnson. Thinking about what was coming tomorrow morning, I decided to look for a chance to talk straight with Hayden about what he was getting into.
After a turtle-steak supper, the crew gathered on deck to see what kind of sunset God had in mind for them. The sea turned a glaring red, and the water danced with phosphorescence, as if an underwater fireworks show was going on. The childlike joy on the faces of these pampered, hardened mariners as they leaned at the rail was both touching and a little sickening. Life wasn’t this simple, anymore. These were Depression times; war times. They were hiding, out here in the open. But who the hell could blame them?
Betsy, the blonde from Rochester, kind of sidled up next to me as we studied the sunset; she had a freshly scrubbed soapy smell that reminded me of Margot, B.C. (before Chanel), and her hair was a mop of curls almost as cute as her blue-eyed, apple-cheeked, lightly lipsticked mug.
“Everyone says you’re a mysterious government agent,” she said.
“Everyone’s right,” I said. “Particularly the mysterious part.”
“It’s too bad...”
“That I’m mysterious?”
“That you’re not going to be on the Yankee except just tonight. That isn’t very long.”
“No it isn’t. Isn’t that a shame?”
She licked her lips and they glistened. “Terrible... Want to sit with me downstairs?”
Her hand locked in mine, and she led me through the deckhouse down the companionway to the main cabin, where I sat with her at the table, getting dirty looks from at least six of the rich sailor boys. We talked a little about my being from Chicago and how she hated Rochester; she also hated the all-girls schools she’d attended. Under the table, she rubbed her leg against mine.
After some guitar playing and folk-song singing, the crew headed for their bunks at eight o’clock. Betsy waved and smiled and went off to her cabin with Dorothy, giggling.
I lay in my bunk for about an hour, sorting through the memorized information Miller had fed me, an actor going over his lines, feeling the same sort of butterflies in my stomach, and it wasn’t seasickness. A little after nine, I swung out of the bunk and padded up to the deck, where the breeze had turned cool with a kiss of ocean mist in it. I knew that kid Hayden was standing watch and this would be my chance for a word alone with him.
The young man was stretched out on his back in a dinghy, ropes for his bed. His hands were locked behind his head, elbows winged out; bare-chested, in shorts, legs long and gangly, he was studying the starry sky with wide-eyed expectation.
“You always stand watch on your back?” I asked him.
“Mr. Heller,” he said, sitting up, his voice a breathy second tenor. “Is there a problem, sir?”
“Naw. Just thought I’d see if you wanted some company. Eight o’clock’s a little early to hit the rack for this Chicago boy.”
He swung out of the dinghy, bare feet landing lightly on the deck; he was aware that every movement up here was conveyed below, where the others slept.
“Would you like some coffee? I have a pot in the skipper’s deckhouse.”
Soon we were sitting on a bench on deck, sipping coffee from tin mugs, contemplating the stars scattered on a cloudless, richly pastel blue sky shared with a sicklelike slice of yellow moon. It was unreal, like an imitation sky in a Hollywood nightclub.
“The skipper says you’re a real sailor,” I said to the lad, “which I take to mean you’re not paying three grand for the fun of sailing around the world.”
“I wouldn’t mind having three grand,” he reflected. “I’d buy my own ship. No, I’m getting paid, one hundred a month. Johnson didn’t want to pay me anything, you know, said the experience of a voyage around the world would be pay enough. But I drove a harder bargain.”
Words tumbled out of this kid’s mouth without modulation, dropping off at the end of the sentence as his breath gave out. It was as if he were issuing the words to float before him for review.
“Yeah, you really held his head under the water on that deal,” I said.
He regarded me with steady eyes, his smile turned a sardonic shade rare in one his age. “The lure of this life isn’t money, Mr. Heller. It’s the utter simplicity.”
“Your skipper’s taking in a pretty penny for sharing this simple life with these spoiled brats.”
“Well-heeled vagabonds, I call them. You see, that’s why I’m probably destined to be a mate, not a master. Johnson doesn’t have to deal with just the ship, but with the land — finance, lectures, photographs for the Geographic. He’s practical. I’m romantic. He’s tolerant. Half the time I want to toss these rich babies overboard.”
“They love you, you know.”
A grin blossomed. “Well, I pride myself on treating them harshly, and they thrive on the punishment. Maybe it’ll make men of them... if the war doesn’t do it first.”
The world, by way of the ocean, stretched endlessly before us, seeming empty, nicely empty. No people.
“It is coming,” I said, “isn’t it?”