Birdneck looked across for a moment. Then he said:
"Aw-w, shut up."
Al, Mush, and I had brought our first spoonful of brown-specked tapioca almost up to our mouths. We carefully put our spoons down and quietly left the table.
3. Moving-Picture Sailor
THE THREE OF US SAT ON THE RIM of the open hatch and lit cigarettes. One by one, the rest of the crew climbed down to the deck. Now and again one of them would let out an uninhibited belch. A few of the older men sat down alongside us; others drifted over to the rail and smoked and spat over the side.
The fat, ferocious man pointed the stem of his pipe toward the ship docked alongside.
"There's a ship that feeds good."
A young guy with a strong Hell's Kitchen accent said, "Yeah, can't be any woise than this tub. This ship feeds lousy. Christ! Dere was—woims in the—oatmeal this mornin'!"
As I turned in my mind this picture of amorous worms cavorting in bowls of lumpy porridge, Al sneered, "And that guy's brother's a Phi Beta Kappa."
The tallest man aboard, a huge, shirtless Slav who wore a pair of overalls and an incongruous hard straw hat dipped forward over his eyes, joined the group leaning over the rail. He hadn't spoken all through lunch, and for the first time I heard his voice.
"If she feed like oder Limey ships, her grub's lousy, too." He paused a bit and then went on. "Them Lambert Holt ships keep their course not by compass. They watch for floating prune pit in oder Lambert Holt ship's wake."
The Fat Man scowled at him. "I'm telling you, that ship feeds good."
For a moment nothing was said. Then from the upper deck a strident voice shouted, "All right, now—all right. Turn to."
We all looked up at the man with the yachtsman's cap. Al muttered, "That's the Mate—First Mate. He's a Swede."
The Fat Man squinted up at the Mate and hollered, "T'ain't one o'clock yet."
The Mate snapped a watch from his pants pocket, studied it a moment, then shouted, "Go ahead—turn to. It is."
Slowly the men shuffled over to that twisted pile of gear and rigging they had been working on. The stuff was being stowed in the shelter deck (this terminology I found out later). I made a number of trips back and forth, loaded down with ropes and block and fall, and had returned to the pile to be loaded again when a factory whistle near the docks let out a blast. The Fat Man growled under his breath.
"The goddam liar, that's one o'clock now," and he scowled up at the Mate astride the upper deck, his hands grasping the rails. The Mate returned a cold blue eye to the sweaty fat man and me.
All through that hot afternoon we lugged, pushed, and pulled gear until my back was sore, my hands grease-black and flecked with blood from the frayed wire cable—and did I have a headache!
It was one endless, painful, red blur until the Mate reluctantly growled, "All right. Knock off."
Al showed me where I could wash up, and I wearily dragged myself to the fo'castle and started changing my clothes.
"Where you goin'?" asked Mush.
"Home," I said.
"Ain't you gonna eat aboard? It's part of your pay."
I couldn't eat that slop again that day. I'd have to start slowly. I picked my bunk, too, with Al's advice—an upper near a porthole, as he'd suggested.
Al and Mush walked me to the gangplank when I was dressed—or rather, to the section of the rail where the gangplank had been. Now it was one continuous rail. I looked over the side.
"Hey, what happened to the ocean?"
"We're in the river."
"But where's the water?"
We looked down over the side—a long way down. We were high and dry!
"We're in drydock," said Al.
"But how am I going to get home?"
"Climb down that ladder," and he pointed to a long thin connecting ladder lashed to the side that led down to the dock. It looked awfully thin and precarious. But I had brought along only a pair of dungarees and a pair of work shoes—no pajamas and no toothbrush. I couldn't sleep aboard ship. The boys had been too polite to tell me nobody slept in pajamas.
I climbed over and, clinging to that long ladder with my sore, puffy hands, I carefully inched my way down to the dock.
My father was home when I got there. It was evident he didn't approve of my plans to work my passage and ship out. He belonged (and still does, and I've joined him) to the pushbutton school of thought—that all unpleasant labor should and could be accomplished by pushing a button. Eventually we'll all sit back and get unpleasant things done by pushing buttons, and the only work worthy of men could be accomplished sitting down comfortably, thinking of solutions. He maintained a stony silence all evening.
The next morning when I got back to my ship, a crew of men were scraping her bottom—scraping and painting. I climbed aboard, this time carrying my duffle. I'd come to stay. I don't remember how I got up that long, thin ladder with my bundle. Vaguely, I recall closing my eyes and just climbing up, up, until I felt the solid, welcome rail of the Hermanita.
I went back to the fo'castle. It had the smell of a place where men had slept. The bunk under the one I'd picked for myself was the smelliest and messiest in the fo'castle. After I'd changed into my work clothes, I went out and sat on the hatch. It was pleasant there in the cool of the morning. Some of the rest of the crew began to climb down from breakfast. A few were still chewing their food, their unshaven chins shining with grease; others came down yawning or scratching themselves. What a blot they were against the clear blue sky.
When enough of us had gathered on the hatch, the Mate appeared on the upper deck and bellowed:
"All right. Turn to—go forward and tackle that f'ward winch. Hey, you [and he pointed at the fat man], did you ever work a winch?"
"I've sailed around the Horn and worked more winches than you ever sighted and—"
"All right . . . hey, you young fellers, go along with him. Work the cable off the winch and grease 'em down. The rest of you, come up here."
We followed that old blowhard, the fat Sailing Man, through the shelter deck up forward. Mush, Al, and I. It was evident the Mate had meant us when he said young fellers. We tackled that winch, but it wasn't the old fatty who worked it so we could unwind the cable.
He blustered and blundered around with the levers until he somehow caught one of his beefy hands in the works and gashed it. He bellowed, sweated, and swore, and tied up his bleeding fist in a filthy handkerchief.
Al took over. He seemed to know about this stuff. We spent most of the morning at that job. The twisted wire cable was frayed and full of microscopic needles that cut through the rag with which I was swabbing my section. Soon my hands were bleeding from hundreds of tiny scratches.
The rest of the crew were soon moving rigging up forward. Al told me we were rigging the booms to start loading as soon as we got out of drydock.
I noticed a new man had joined the crew, a stocky young fellow with fine shoulders, powerful arms, and lean shanks. He moved easily and responded quickly to the Mate's orders.
"Well," I thought, "this is the first guy I've seen aboard who looks and acts like a sailor."
When the Mate ordered a line carried up the mast and run through the block up there so we could work the winch and pull the cable through, this new man tied the line to the back of his belt and went up the ladder to the masthead as quick as a monkey—with the line making a long tail after him, pointing up his simian resemblance. He ran the line through and then, instead of slowly and laboriously climbing down, to kill time as the rest of the gang had been doing, he wrapped his legs around one of the cables attached to the mast and zipped back to the deck in a flash.