"Change your clothes back aft in the fo'castle, stow 'em in one of those lockers, keep the key you find in the door with you, then come back here and join this gang moving gear."
Well, I did all that, and in a pair of dungarees flecked with plaster I had used around my studio I came back and joined the gang—except for a few young fellows, as heterogeneous a group of broken-down dock rats and old port bums as you'd ever hope to see along South Street. The brawny men of the sea—huh!
With a cheery good morning, I grabbed the tangle of rope and began to tug at it, carrying it in the general direction in which they were moving. They had not responded to my polite greeting; those near me just gave me a weary look. Then a fierce-looking fat old man snarled, "Drop it."
I did. I guessed he meant that tangle of rope with which I'd been getting nowhere.
"C'mon . . . c'mon," came from the only articulate member of the crew of the S.S. Hermanita. I followed them as they slowly climbed a ladder to the upper deck. They trooped in to what appeared to be a very simply furnished dining room (crew's mess). There were two long wooden tables with no cloth, a couple of large platters of bread, and a few dishes full of some cloudy yellow grease—I found out later it was melted, rancid butter. The crew slowly sat down, dirty and sweaty as they were. I was seated alongside two young guys, one about my own age, a well-built blond with pretty, girlish features and a too short upper lip. Next to him sat a taller, blubber-lipped younger boy whom the blond guy called Mush. They didn't look so tough. The streaks of dirt on their sweaty faces fooled me at first.
I tried to stir up some talk as I turned to the blond.
"That wasn't so hard."
"Huh?"
"I mean port work. I'd been told if I could stand port work, the rest wouldn't be so tough."
"How long you been aboard—who told you?"
"Captain Brandt. You see, I met him. I was introduced by . . ."
There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. Everybody was looking at me—from down the table there came a sound.
"Nerts."
I shut up; it was a relief when the fat man bellowed:
"Hey, Flip, bring on the slops."
And that howl was taken up by the rest of the men. A tousle-headed, bright-eyed old Filipino stuck his head in the door and shouted above the melee.
"Shoddop. Soon. Wait."
That served only to increase the volume of the howls. Under cover of the racket, the blond guy spoke to me again.
"Where you from?"
"Here."
"You mean New York?"
I said, "Yeah."
"My name's Al Bricker—this is Mush Miller," and he indicated the tall boy he'd been talking to. I told them my name, then Mush Miller leaned toward me and asked, "You living in New York or studying? I'm from Illinois Prep and Al here is at Indiana State."
"No, I'm an artist."
The blond seemed impressed. Then, out of the corner of his mouth, he tipped me off.
"Steer clear of midships if you want to get along with the crew. I know; I've shipped out before. This is Mush's first trip, but I've been around."
"Thanks. . . . You see, I met Captain Brandt socially and I thought . . ." "Stow it," he said.
A brown, knotty arm banged a heavy plate down in front of me. 'Tor' chop."
I looked up at the grinning face of the Filipino with a huge corncob clinched in his white teeth. Then I looked down at my plate. Two pork chops, slithering around in their own grease, a large water-soaked boiled potato, and a mound of something that might be boiled turnips—not the lunch I'd pick for a hot day.
The rest of the men were already busy with their food; not many were using their forks but, grasping the chops in one grimy fist and a lump of bread in the other, they ate. There were a number of arguments going on. One at the end of the table took my attention. A guy with a face like a black and white Neanderthal—big-jawed and no forehead (his hair didn't seem to grow from his scalp but looked as if it were thatched to it—a coal-black shiny roof that eaved over his jutting frontals)—seemed to be on the defensive. I couldn't make out his opponent's argument, but the Neanderthaler's "Yeah! Yeah!" could be heard above the jangle of talk, clatter of dishes, and the noise of men eating.
The blond guy, Al, said in a low voice, "That's the black gang. The deck crew and engine-room gang don't mix."
One of the black gang (old Pat, the oiler, I found out later) was in the midst of a story; the others quieted down to listen.
He was a chubby, straight-backed, old Irishman with a bellowing beer stimme. I never got the beginning of it, but I gathered he'd applied for a berth aboard the Palestinian Line. They had only two ships.
"Then in I walks. There sits this old Jew guy with his whiskers tied up in a knot to keep them out of the inkwell. Sez I—" and that was lost in the clatter of dishes as Flip crashed into the galley with a load on his tray.
Pat went on with his story. I could tell from his gestures when the old Jew with his knotted whiskers was talking. He'd crouch over, wave his hands, palms up under his chin, and contort his face, trying to get his kilarney pug down to a Semitic beak. When Pat straightened and bellowed a forthright bellow, he was himself—the straight-backed, upstanding, noble Irishman.
"Mother of God—an' there he was with his whiskers tied up in a knot to keep 'em from dippin' in his inkpot."
And Pat banged his open palm down on the table and went off into a gale of raucous, rattling laughter that almost knocked him sideward.
Out of the side of his mouth, Al said, "He just slays him."
Again the knotty brown arm of Flip dipped over my shoulder and slammed down a dish.
"Deserk!" he said with finality.
I whispered to Aclass="underline"
"What do you think it is?"
"That? That's tapioca . . . tapioca pudding. Those brown spots fool you; they're chunks of apple, old apples left in the icebox since the last trip, I guess."
The argument with the black-thatched Neanderthal at the other end of the table had risen to a noisy crescendo. A scrawny-headed guy with a birdlike neck was shouting across at Black Thatch.
"Well, what d'hell did you wanna bring a stinkin' punk boy into our cabin for?"
All other talk stopped.
Black Thatch, gesturing with his spoon, said, "Da poor kid didn't have no place to sleep. Jeez, you wouldn't want a kid to sleep under the pier, would you?"
"Yeah . . . yeah, you go take yer punk some place else—"
"My punk?" said Black Thatch. His eyebrows disappeared up in the eaves of his hair. "I'm telling ya I let the kid sleep wit me cause he was on the beach. And it ain't his fault he's a punk—he was born that way. He's a p'voit—"
"Yah . . ."
"Yah, a p'voit. Now, listen." Black Thatch leaned his arm across the table, punctuating his talk with his spoon held delicately at end. "I've been goin' to sea fer fifteen years and in all that time I've been readin'—"
"You've been reading! Whyn't you shut up and lissen to them kids down the end of the table," and Birdneck indicated us—Mush, Al, and me—with a flick of his thumb. "They kin tell you more in a minute than you can fin' out in the rest of your life . . . readin'."
It was evident that our use of knives and forks, our subdued conversation, and my gold-rimmed specs had impressed Bird-neck with our gentility. We silently picked up our spoons and dug into the tapioca.
"Readin' . . . yas, readin'!" bellowed Black Thatch. "Fer fifteen years I've been goin' to sea and readin' books. Books on sex and sex'al p'voision. An' I could tell you an' dem tings you never heard of. Betcha you don't know—yas, an' dey don't know for all dere education—dere's people what eats—" His voice was lost again in a sharp hiss.