Somewhere sometime we saw Mush and the gang he'd gone cavorting with. Mush was riding high, and above a wave of shoulders, sombreros, berets, and uniform caps he "sooyed" a hoosier hog call. Hatless, his yellow hair, wetted down by the drizzle, dripped over his heated beaming face and he triumphantly threw up one hand with four fingers spread. That obviously meant he had safely weathered four major engagements and was still up and going strong.
Perhaps that influenced me to suggest we experiment with one of those smaller places. Perhaps those mature women might— That must have been the time we lost Joe. I don't remember seeing him the rest of the night. He snorted at the suggestion. He'd have no truck with those small, poorly equipped establishments. Goddammit, why in a port full— yes, full of all kind womins—and girls (and his voice had risen to that shrill gurgle it always did when he was aroused) — yes, charmantes girls—why we go pick some blousy mamas in a sal maison—?
That was just the point I was trying to make. The maternal intuition of these women was not to be scoffed at, and in that turbulent island we formed in the middle of one of those crowded streets I tried to quote that letter Benjamin Franklin is said to have written to a young man contemplating matrimony (the original I'm told reposes in state in the Library of Congress)'—particularly, the passage on the universal similarity of all women—but I couldn't remember it too well. And Joe wasn't listening. He'd gotten beyond the inadequacies of English and was shouting in a mixture of undeterminable French and his Island language.
You couldn't argue with anyone whose language you couldn't understand and one who wouldn't listen to your cool, logical reasoning. Joe pushed off through the crowd—and we lost him.
But Perry stood by. My garbled reference to Benjamin Franklin's attributed writing had swung him, and Joe's French and Island gibberish had been as incomprehensible to him as it was to me.
Sometime in the dizzy tangle of the evening, we had returned to that first house. Seems Perry remembered his obligation to the Madame of the house and he felt it was his duty to pay his respects and keep his promise to hasta luego. It was curious how quickly the gentle, slender girl with the broad brow had completely forgotten me, and seemed a little frightened maybe because I'd lost my hat somewhere and my untrimmed hair, a tangled mat from the rain, might have given her another impression of me—the coarser me. The house was crowded and very busy. And my poetic, thin-faced brunette sought refuge in a group of uniformed cadets as if she didn't know me from any other Adam that clumped into the place. She looked weary and paler...
There was one clear moment I remembered like a black sharp dot on the interwoven labyrinth of a surrealist canvas— when we met the little Bos'n walking sober and alone in one of the streets. I greeted him with my customary camaraderie and he told us to be careful, some of our crew had got mixed up in some trouble further down the street—and he indicated a couple of uniformed men going back in the direction he'd come from. The crew had been plunking stones at some electric bulbs over some doorway, in the manner of the Coney Island games, and they laid bets. It was about that time I was vaguely conscious of Perry melting away in the other direction and he was well mixed into the crowd before I could call after him.
Those uniformed men had been policemen. Seems there had been a number of cops around, but I never could recognize them—their uniforms varied so much. Or so it appeared that night. Some cops dressed in olive-green belted overcoats and wore little helmets with a short spike atop—the German helmet the Kaiser thought was so becoming with his spiked mustachios in his last war. There was another group who wore black uniforms ; other cops with flat-topped visored caps who toured in pairs through the district; then, of course, there were the sailor-boy cops down along the waterfront. And as I finally got dressed and stood buttoning up, I looked at Mush sprawling there half out of his bunk and I remembered—sure, he's there because I helped put him there.
We'd met someplace and we draped him over our shoulders, Al and me, and we walked him and dragged him back to the ship completely spent, sopping wet, and irrevocably boiled. How'd we make the gangplank that way, three abreast? Since, cold sober, that narrow plank with its dangling rope rail provided for only one man's passage—come to think of it, I remember lugging my end of Mush until we stopped in the Chicago Bar, which had no cognac, only vino—and I don't remember leaving it—
Setting one foot in front of the other so I'd not jar my head, which I carried high and delicately with its painful inner burden, I turned, let myself out of the cabin, and walked around and climbed out on deck.
The cruel light of the sun exploded all over the place. Again, I protested petulantly the glaring white paintwork all over the ship that blinded my eyes and sent red-hot pain searing through my long-suffering head. I laid my course for the messdeck and took off. A steaming, bitter cup of black coffee I'd been told works wonders, or the skin of the dog that bit you, or a pickled herring was good for a katzenjammer too. Since none of the latter were available, I knew where there was black coffee and I made for it.
In checking my tack I risked my precious retina and blinked up at the messdeck. There I saw a large, violet-colored, orange-whiskered nanny goat!
I rockily swung out, made the ladder and climbed up to face this apparition. She was there all right, accompanied by a swarthy, slender boy—one Argentinian without mustachios—and surrounded by admiring members of our crew.
"Howya feelin', kid?" Perry greeted me. "Bad, huh? Ya know what's d'best ting for dat—d'very best? Goat's milk."
"I don't feel good—"
"Dis is d'stuff for ya, den."
"You sure, Perry? My stomach's a little—"
"I'm tellin' ya, ain't it?" And Perry whirled his head around the circle of those others who stood there so fast, if they had said no he couldn't have seen it. Nobody said anything. Perry continued.
"See, what'd I tell ya? It's de healthiest stuff in d'woild." And he said something to the boy which must have meant "Fill 'em up." If my tongue hadn't been so thick and unco-operative, I'd have argued that "the healthiest stuff in the world" part. I mean, since I know—in fact, I have first-rate authorities who maintain that kumiss, mare's milk, supersedes any liquid lactic food in protein, vitamin and mineral content, and it's well known that invalids and infants among the central Tibetan tribe have been known to—
But before I could gather my scrambled, scattered wits about me, he'd ordered the boy to draw me a measure and he generously dug down into his jeans to pay for it. The young fellow sat a little can under the goat and squatted on his heels and squirted some of the old gray nanny goat's (it was a trick of the sun that keyed up her color scheme to violet and orange) milk into the little can with a sharp tinkling sound.
He straightened up and placed it into my hands and I carried it to my innocent mouth with no thought—g-g-g g-u-g.
Now as one who has experienced that I warn all in similar circumstances against imbibing from a greasy can any such libation fresh, warm, and smelly from any and all gray or violet-colored nanny goats. It's disastrous, and does not appease your misery—it intensifies your suffering. With a grievous hurt look at this guy Perry who had been my friend I stumbled, crawled, and rolled toward the bathroom back aft.
And I almost made it through that stretch of afterdeck with the rope cradles laden with case oil popping out of the open hatch and threatening to sweep me over side, when I heard a shout and someone calling me from the messdeck I'd just left. I turned. That renegade Perry was enthusiastically pointing me out to a pompous little man clad in an olive-green, brass-buttoned uniform. One look was enough. In desperation I tried to think quickly—shall I just jump over the side and swim the river or try to outrun this?