When each of us with a bucket of red lead, a brush and a chipping hammer, climbed over side, and settled on our plank to spend the morning chipping rust blisters on the old tub's hull. Then we'd paint the patch with red lead. The opportunity to stall there is obvious—only you could see and judge how much chipping the plate you were banging your nose against needed, if you felt like chipping, or how much red leading, if you felt like painting. And you could twiddle your hammer with a concentrated look on your face for hours at a time, while you thought of the finer things of life.
And if the Mate leaned over the rail and howled, "Vat d'hell you doin' dere?" you could calmly and with complete assurance say, "Come and look," and know he wouldn't, since two of us on that tilting plank served to balance it, and if he just dared to climb down, we'd all surely be tumbled and go splashing down into the cold, dirty river. And we knew it and so did he.
Perry had carried that attitude just a little too far in his argument with the Mate that afternoon. The insatiable Perry had talked the Polack guy into lunching at the Chicago Bar. He must have been very persuasive for the Polack was a quivering mess from his night ashore. They came back to the ship with a rolling list that made you dizzy while you watched them. With a whoop and a howl they scrambled over side and down to their plank. There, Perry stood holding on with one arm crooked around the line at his end of the plank, as he gestured wildly with his dripping paintbrush held in the other hand and edified us all with a lecture on the rights and privileges of American seamen in foreign ports. The Polack, giggling and squirming at the other end, joined in at the infrequent pauses in Perry's dissertation with his hard inane howl.
The Swede Mate poked his head over the rail and shouted down at Perry, and he, with great bravado and his massive accumulation of questionable Maritime Law and a venomous sarcasm, told the Mate off to the grinning silent approval of the rest of the crew. And Perry almost drew an irrepressible round of applause when at one time during his oration a magnificent gesture upward with his paintbrush caught the Mate and spotted his white yachtsman's cap with big gooey drops of red lead.
Perry concluded with the Marseillaise, followed by a direct and very personal—
"And foidermore, f'cue, Mr. Mate. We're walkin' off dis lousy ship any time we wanta. Yeah—right now. Howya like dat? Come on, Polack."
The Mate didn't say a word to that—not a word. He looked down at them in a roaring silence, then he was gone from the rail.
Perry and the Polack climbed back on the deck, marched back aft, and dressed themselves up in their striped silk shirts and going-ashore clothes. It seemed that a lot of us had tumbled our buckets about that time and lost our paint so we too climbed back on deck to get a refill. We all politely waited our turn at the big barrel of red lead Chips had mixed, so that there were quite a few of us on the shore side of the ship when Perry and the Polack burst through the fo'castle door to rumble down the deck to the gangplank, still helling around and haw-haw-ing to each other how they'd showed this Mate up.
The Old Man up on his deck quietly looked down. The Mate stood astride the messdeck. Well, it looked as if Perry and the Polack knew what they were doing—no one stopped them. I wished I'd been on Perry's scaffold. I'd have gone along, taken my portfolios, and done some of the painting I'd hoped for instead of smearing this damn red lead—
They went down the narrow gangplank trying to walk arm in arm, laughing and waving good-by—free as birds. And when they reached the soil of the Republic of Argentine they were nabbed and caged for the next ten days. The little sailor-boy Port Cop enforced by a couple of other men in uniform stepped out of the shadows of our ship's hull, collared our free spirits, and marched them off to the hoosegow without a break in their stride.
No one knew how come the cops were there waiting. Had the Old Man signaled? Had he radioed an S.O.S.?
We all went about our business, carefully chipping and red leading the hull of the good ship S.S. Hermanita, some murmuring Perry shouldn't have done it, and it's tough on the Polack kid. The Mate didn't shout down at us the rest of the afternoon. He didn't have to.
Philip went ashore with me as interpreter to help me buy that hat that evening. All the officers were eating ashore that night so he got out early. He couldn't speak Spanish as well as Perry, but the language he did speak was less apt to land you in some of the complicated situations Perry always seemed to get mixed up with.
We walked up to the town. A few of the shops were still open. One we passed showed pink feminine flimsies in its windows. Philip said that shop catered to the bordello ladies. He always called them that—he was always a polite boy. That might have been true but none that I saw wore any stuff like that.
Then we came to a shop that exhibited a number of large, black sombreros, a few berets, and a couple of bags of charcoal in its window. In the center on a stand was a light-yellow velour hat. There was an old woman sitting in the shop near a small stove.
We entered, I first, and as I swung the tall door open, it crashed up against the inside of that shop with a tremendous clatter. That was my first experience with those damn doors —they gave me a lot of trouble later. It seems the Argentinians never have those air brakes we always take for granted on our New York doors and they keep their hinges too well oiled. Whenever I'd swing a door open, I'd always forget to hang on to the damn thing and then close it, carefully. I'd just push it open and expect some resistance from those nice little air brakes which quietly and modestly add to our comfort.
The old woman jumped as if she were shot and chattered some nasty stuff in Spanish.
"She says you are a big beef," said Philip quietly.
"Tell her I just want to buy a hat."
He told her. She grumbled and went to the window.
"She says she don' see why a dumb ox needs a hat."
Philip was taking his job as interpreter too literally, I felt. The old woman's remarks had no bearing on the business at hand.
She gathered up a few large sombreros and then threw them down on a wooden counter. But Philip, who had gone to the window too, called her back, evidently insisting she bring that prize yellow velour out for our inspection.
I'd begun to try on a few sombreros. They didn't look bad. I got one that fitted and was quite pleased with my reflection in a glass that hung in the darkness of the shop. But Philip objected.
"No—no—not dat. Here, try dis golden one. It goes good with your whiskers, I bet."
See—everyone was recognizing that beard.
Philip had tried the yellow hat on and was knocking himself wall-eyed trying to get a view of his profile in the glass alongside of me.
"Not that one, Philip. It'll dirty up too quickly."
The old woman broke in with a word or two. Philip responded. Evidently her remark was not directed to me.
"Ask how much for the hat I'm wearing," I said.
He did and told me.
"She says seven pesos—too much I'll tell her."
He did, and she talked quite a lot then.
"She says I have head like dumb ox too. Don't buy it anyway."
"But I gotta have a hat."
"Sure, all right—here's a fine hat. Buy dis one."
Seems that Philip liked that yellow velour so much, unless something happened quick I'd have to buy me a hat I disliked very much.
"Look, Philip, ask her how much it is."
After a moment, he turned back to me with a broad smile, holding the hat out to me.
"She's only twelve pesos fifty centavos. That's a bargain— cheap."