After I dug my way back into the bench of wallflowers, I sat there morosely wishing I'd soon get old enough, fat enough, and gray so that I'd not be expected to dance, play tennis, or go on brisk hikes.
I find whenever Fm getting along socially—the life of the party, so to speak—on my repertoire of bright stories, lilting songs, and sparkling anecdotes, some dim-witted, inarticulate character with a bony pinhead and facile feet suggests let's all dance, hike, or play tennis, and my social brilliancy fades, flickers, and goes out.
On occasion I've been led in the gentle, kindly arms of girls who could not be persuaded that I was purely the mental type and insisted I needed only sympathetic coaching to become an excellent terpsichorean. And after they had grimly struggled with my resisting bulk they'd usually straighten their bodies, pat down their coiffures and dresses, and in short pants breathlessly assure me I was coming along fine. And they'd leave me with a strange smile on their flushed faces which plainly said, "What a man"—that, I hope, not in its worst sense. So I'd creep off into some lonesome corner with a morbid heavy tome of pessimistic philosophy and try to pull the covers down over my head to deaden the sounds of the tinkling laughter of those charming girls pirouetting with that bony-headed moron with the educated feet who had lured them away from me.
Dancing, tennis playing, and mountain climbing or brisk hikes are three diversions which have always reared their ugly heads (singly or in toto) at every social gathering in which I find myself. Here it was in the fo'castle.
So I felt no resentment—as most everyone else did—when the Swede Mate stuck his head in the fo'castle door and shouted politely: "Please, pipe down on that goddam racket. The Skipper's got a headache." And our fo'castle party thinned out and finally died altogether, since we couldn't have fun without noise, and the wine bottles had run dry.
20. Two Sad Stories
THE RED-HEADED SECOND MATE LEANED HIS ELBOWS on the rail as he gloomily looked down at a frantic little tugboat.
"I hear you're studying to be an artist," he said.
That caught me unawares. He'd been howling just a few minutes before what a thick-witted, incompetent imbecile I was—he hadn't used those words—because I'd handled the big hawsers so clumsily and tied them so badly the little tug had gone chugging down river towing nothing more than our line. Our ship stayed put while the hawser whipped out after the busy little tug. Our lines were adjusted and he had calmed down.
Some years ago I remember a high-school teacher, Elly May Pluck (who looked like that—sort of a bloomer-girl type), scornfully asking me pretty much the same question, apropos of nothing, while I was mispronouncing a passage from As You Like It in oral exercise—Slobodkin, so you're going to be an artist? There was definitely the implication that one -who pronounces "hey nonino" "hi-non-nin-no" could never reach the Olympian heights of intellectual development necessary to push a lump of clay around or knock chunks off a stone until it looks like the form you're hunting, or smear clean sheets of paper until you've hoodwinked ever}'one including yourself that you've created an illusion of shape and space.
There was no use reminding that woman of little faith that I was then, at fourteen, the chief cartoonist of the Garnet and Gray, our high-school newspaper. She must have known that and disapproved heartily. Maybe she felt all members of the G. and G. staff should have a passing scholastic record like the football squad before they were allowed to play with the arts. For her information, if she's still around and hasn't corroded her innards with her own vitriolic nastiness, and for all others who sneer at inarticulate, mispronouncing, infinitive-splitting plastic artists—it is the boast of some of the best sculptors and painters I've ever known that they're completely illiterate and, for some reason, proud of it.
Her question had come out of the blue. I was having enough trouble with Shakespeare's vagaries without her heckling, and all I could answer was yeh! But I felt that was inadequate, and now that the Mate had sprung the same thing I was wary.
Maybe there was more than meets the eye in his simple query. It was the first time he'd ever spoken to me outside of his line of duty since I'd been aboard, and his orders were usually so larded with roaring expletives I couldn't understand them even if I could do the work. He might have been pumping me for the Skipper, who had assumed before I came aboard I was giving up my career as an artist.
The Second repeated his question and added: Are ya—or am t ya :
"N-o-o, not exactly. Well, I've exhibited—I had a studio before I shipped out. And though an artist never stops studying—
"Keep at it, kid. Never take up this goddam life. A sailor's life is a lousy way of livin'—"
I didn't know what to say to that—whether I'd politely agree with him or admit I'd taken this job aboard a ship just to settle an argument brought on by a young cat—but it seems the Second didn't want any answers. He was grouchy and rebellious and was sounding off.
He and I were up on the poopdeck watching the big tow lines that tied us to the tugboat. We were being towed down that narrow strip of river backwards since the ship couldn't be turned. We were leaving Rio Santiago to ship further south.
"Yeah, take my advice, kid. Don't let it get ya—it's a lousy life."
We leaned on the rail in silence. Then after a few minutes he went on.
"Every goddam time we make New York I tell myself— all right, that's enough. So I'll go back to school—"
"School?"
"Yeah, school. I've just got a couple more years to go to get me an M.D. But for the past six years—it's been like this. I get back to port, get tanked up, mixed up with some dame. Then I'd be broke and have to ship out again. God, what a goddam fool I've been. Don't let this life get ya, kid. Stick to your studying. Be an artist!"
I felt a glow of gratitude and sympathy for the Second, and started to tell him when he broke in with:
"Ya goddamned, fat-headed, bilge-livered fool! Whyn'tyou watch that goddam line—? Grab it!"
One of the hawsers had loosened and was slipping over the side and the other was so taut it would snap in a minute—and our ship was gently swinging toward the river bank. We retied those lines. That ended our friendly conversation and I never had any other personal contact with the Second until the time he kicked me up on the boat deck and almost knocked me overside.
We had shoved off from Rio Santiago late in the afternoon and it was almost dark before our ship had been dragged far enough down that narrow strip of river that emptied into the wide-mouthed La Platte so that the tugs could turn us around and tow the S.S. Hermanita by its forward end. There was something undignified about having your ship yanked by her stem down that muddy river and all the crew felt it. Maybe that's what disturbed the Second.
Just before we hoisted our gangplank Perry and the Polack had been marched back to the ship under the custody of the sailor-boy cop (still smiling) who'd led them away. All the starch had been taken out of Perry. He was unnaturally quiet; the Polack grinned sheepishly as usual. They looked paler, thinner, and both needed shaves. That spell in the calaboose seemed to have tamed Perry and he didn't talk that evening, but there was a gleam in his eye that indicated that conniver had "some inside dope."
Mush wore his worried look to supper. He told me Philip and Sparks had been left ashore. They had gone up to Buenos Aires on the early morning train to get some radio equipment. Sparks had taken Philip along as an interpreter. They had been told we were shoving off this afternoon. Mush bet it was that bastard Sparks' fault they missed the boat.