But the training for both requires undivided attention. I don't mean sculpture and engineering. I mean the ability to work or stall.
Therefore, this ability I have of looking harried, earnest, and deeply immersed in important work, while I contemplate shall I or shall I not go to lunch now, I owe completely to my pal Joe.
Joe never painted overside in that port. Nobody asked him to. He was always too busy. As we carried our paint buckets to the rail and then lugged those splintery planks (our scaffolds) and dropped them over side, his work looked so important the Bos'n, the Swede Mate, and the young Third each gave him an approving glance and left him to weave his gossamer of nothings while they drove us other stupid galley slaves.
Even before we'd be called to turn to, Joe was at it. With the Mate or one of the others watching he would suddenly knit his brows as his eyes (only his keen eyes) saw something up on the prow that needed his immediate attention. He'd hop off the hatch where the rest of us less imaginative dopes sat, snap out his cigarette, and hurry forward, picking up a long strand of rope yarn, and then make the ladder to the prow in two long steps. There he'd tackle one of the big coils of rope or hawser and tie them neatly with the yam. That always happened just a moment before we'd be called to turn to. I never saw him look at his watch; he had an instinct for timing.
Joe would stall around the prow hunting another piece of yam and not finish up that hawser till we were well along with our painting. Seems to me those hawsers were always loosening up and had to be tied almost every morning, either on the prow or back on the poop.
When I caught on after a day or so, I rolled off the hatch and chased after him with another piece of yarn. Two were better than one on that type of job. Then Joe and I would spend the day in a carefully calculated stall. He'd get back to the main deck and walk aft with his eyes knotted in a searching frown. He'd stoop and unearth another long straw-colored wisp of rope yarn. I, following, would hunt another. Then, with the strained look of an expert, he continued along the deck with deliberate tread, trailing the yarn toward midships and climb into the shelter deck, I, his self-appointed assistant, following him.
In the darkness of the shelter deck we'd find some packing case or piece of riggin' to sit on and there we'd light up our cigarettes and sit talking quietly, watching the door out to the deck. No one coming along could see us, but we could see them quick. After a cigarette or two we'd walk back through to the deck aft. Joe would come out the door with a rush to his walk, I trailing him. Again he'd hunt a strand of that rope yam, having discarded his last piece of the golden fleece of indolence in the shelter deck. (That golden fleece that Jason hunted. What'd he want with that stuff—was that a stall, too?)
We marched back to the poop, found some way of finagling away another hour, and then forward again. That stall was good for a few days.
Then, since Joe was a good sailor and knew what was to be done often before the Mates or Bos'n decided it should be, he knew when a section of the hold would be emptied even before the Third Mate who was checking the unloading and marking off the cargo on his charts. Joe was ready to climb down with a big straw broom the instant the last cradle laden with case oil or machine parts had swung up and out of that hatch, and I riding along had possessed myself of a broom too. Sweeping out the sections of the hold was a nice easy job with plenty of chance for rest and smoking.
The cargo slated for Rio Santiago was almost all unloaded now. We'd been tied up in that port for almost a week. I'd begun to develop a rankling grievance that was bound to bust out all over that ship. Here I'd traveled for the first time in my life, not a mere jaunt of five hundred or a thousand miles—why, I'd shipped some six thousand five hundred miles for what? I asked myself. All I'd seen of the Argentine was that flat stretch of muddy water, those dirty North American Packing Company buildings, the shaggy little town, and those dreary houses with a lot of bedraggled sniffling floozies—yes, and even they could go and come as they pleased to Buenos Aires or any place.
Had I known what I know now, had I not been so cocky on what I thought was subject matter worthy to be immortalized in some form of plastic expression, I'd have settled down and made a stack of drawings and paintings right there, and gathered a wealth of material from those pathetic stucco houses and their inmates, that silver-gray and sepia port and those sanguine slaughterhouses. But no—I wanted to see Argentinian culture. The accepted version of Culture with a big hollow C.
Finally, I boiled over and spilled my resentment into the ear of the Bos'n, and he was patient and nice about it. He tipped me off to skip the Mate and go over his head to the Old Man himself.
I did, one afternoon when something had gone wrong with the forward winch and Joe who really knew his stuff brushed aside the Spik who had been working the levers and looked it over and then sent me forward to get a metal marlin spike (used for splicing cable), and I brought one and he twiddled the point of it between the gear wheels of that winch and sent it chugging along as good as new.
The Old Man had come along the deck when Joe and I were congratulating each other. I got my hand as smeared with black grease from his as if I too had contributed. From the look of things no one could tell who had done most to get that winch working. Captain Brandt gave me a beaming, approving smile, so I hit him up for a day off.
"Y' mean you wanta go paintin'—?" He froze up at once.
"Not exactly, Captain Brandt. I'd hoped—"
" 'Cause if you wanna paint, there's still plenty overside. I've been watching you lately—"
Uh, uh. The Old Guy sounded as if he was wising up.
"And I've seen you assisting the A.B.'s—mainly that big feller there."
Joe turned and looked back at that.
"It'd be a shame to have you go overside paintin' now that you seem to be catching holt of the work. You'll be a sailor yet and I'd hate to see you slip up now." He smiled that fatherly smile of his this time. "Yes, son, I'm gettin' proud of ya. I always could pick 'em."
"Thank you, but—you see—I hate to knock off too. The work is more interesting than it's ever been. But that cable I received the day we tied up—"
I fumbled it out of my right-hand pocket with my cleaner left hand.
"There's some important mail waiting for me at the American Consul in Buenos Aires, it says here. I didn't wanna bring it up until now, but I imagine we'll be shipping out soon, and I have some—I have to sign some papers or something at the Consul's office—"
Of course, Captain Brandt wasn't accustomed to having cables delivered to his deck boys—not in ports like Rio Santiago at least. I suppose on rare occasions that might have happened, and news, something to do with life or death or perhaps some wealthy relative's bequest, was folded up in one of those mysterious blue papers and brought aboard in some such obscure mudhole to some more obscure humble member of his crew.
All seafaring men are incurable romanticists. Captain Brandt was no exception, although his romantic ideas had a rather practical bourgeois twist—this news I had received might have been about my share of a wealthy uncle's gold-lined salt mine. And after sucking his teeth and squinting off into the distance as he thought it over, he told me I could knock off Friday and go up to Buenos Aires for the week end.