The ship left the harbor in quiet shame.
In the mess hall belowdeck, Michael Gallatin was looking askance at a plate of fried potatoes swimming in oil. His scrambled eggs, likewise, were about to slide off the plate in a greasy foam and what passed for bacon appeared to be made from fat and brown rubber.
Thank God, he thought, for the memory of the chateaubriand.
At least the ship’s coffee was palatable. Not necessarily good, but strong enough to make the teeth ache and the gut clench. Colonel Vivian had warned him that the food might not be up to the standards of a sidewalk kidney pie in Soho, but it was for the best during the first few days of the voyage until Michael got his sea-legs and sea-stomach. Those tramp freighters roll like a whore with bedbugs, Vivian had told him in undelicate terms. Best to do your puking from an empty bag.
But breakfast was served, and Michael was hungry. He had to eat. The mess hall, even just past dawn, was full of cigarette smoke and men with cigarettes clenched between their teeth. Michael figured almost all of the forty-two crew were here, except for the first and second mates and a few other specialists on engine duty. The clatter and scrape of eating utensils on plates was a diabolic symphony. But the work had been hard and constant since midnight, and now that Sofia was underway—at about five knots per hour, it felt to him—and breakfast was piled up on the gray tables, the mood among the rough-hewn, rough-fleshed and rough-eyed men was definitely lighter.
He hadn’t really met anyone yet. He’d been assigned to a loading detail, but everyone was a stranger. He was sitting at a table with a wiry, wrinkled man of about fifty who could eat around his cigarette by shifting the stick from side to side in his mouth. The second occupant of his table was a stout fellow with sandy-brown hair who wore a sweat-stained blue workshirt and giggled to himself at every opportunity, and the third was a lean black man around thirty or so who had a shaved head and was missing the right half of his nose. It had been carved away to the rippled pink flesh. A very sharp razor at work, Michael thought as he tried one of the bacon strips. The black man wore a necklace of cowrie shells, another necklace of ebony beads and a third with some kind of hexagonal blue stone hanging from it. He had deeply-sunken eyes that looked at no one directly but seemed to be seeing a lot.
“Ah, ya!” boomed a voice behind Michael. “Here’s da sumabitch I wanna find!”
Michael turned around in his chair. Over him stood the monstrous, huge-shouldered, lantern-jawed man he’d heard called ‘Olaf’. They’d been on the same loading detail. Michael had already apologized for some infraction that had involved the passing back and forth of heavy crates, though he wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done to make Olaf holler a curse and spit on the deck. Michael had been briefed and trained on all this, but the briefing book and the landlubber’s lessons went out the window when the hard, fast work began.
“I’m talkin’ to you!” Olaf said, as if Michael didn’t already know. The mess hall went silent. “You gonna sit there or I’m gonna pull you up?”
The man’s protruding brow was dappled with red. His dark brown eyes were also red-rimmed and as fiercely hot as volcanic stones. He had a dirty matting of brown hair with an untameable cowlick sticking up in back. He stood with his meathooks on his wide hips awaiting Michael’s decision.
Michael was tempted to return to his breakfast, but he reasoned he should stand.
“Now you listen!” A finger with a filthy nail jabbed his chest. “You don’t get in Olaf’s way! You don’t push Olaf! Eh? You don’t make Olaf look slow in front of nobody! Eh?”
“I already said I was—”
“You shuddup!” Olaf growled, with another painful finger jab. He looked Michael over from boots to cap. “You ain’t no sailor!” Michael said nothing. This was getting serious; who would have thought the dummy could see through him so easily?
“No sailor!” Olaf repeated. “I seen how you don’t know what you’re doin’! And them hands! They ain’t no sailor’s hands! These,” he said, thrusting his work-scarred and rope-burned palms into Michael’s face, “are sailor’s hands! So you gonna be tellin’ me, what real sailor you put out of a job by signin’ on here! Eh? What friend a’mine you put out on da pier, him with maybe a wife and three, four kids?” He gave a scowl that caused even the black man with the shaved-off nose to wince. “You ain’t no good! I take a breath a’ you, and you stink!”
Michael had no reply for this. He’d already gone one sorry too many.
Olaf smacked his left palm with his right fist. His mouth wore a wild grin. “Ah, I’m gonna teach you! Olaf’s gonna drop you, pretty fella. Olaf’s gonna fix that nose and close up them eyes. Olaf’s gonna stretch that neck and give you a new set a’ teeth! Olaf’s gonna—”
But what Olaf was going to do was interrupted by Michael hitting him in the jaw with his right fist as hard as he could let one fly.
Olaf went back on his heels and crashed over the next table and fell over two men who tried to get away but were caught under the toppling bulk. Then Olaf slid down their backs and fell to the sickly-green floor tiles, where he lay with blood on his mouth, his eyes twitching in their sockets and his fist still balled up but unthrown. He made a bubbling noise over his bitten lower lip, gave a thunderous fart from his massive ass, and then went to sleep like mother’s best baby.
Michael sat down to finish his breakfast. He’d nearly broken his knuckles on that slab of a jaw, but at least he was on his way to having sailor’s hands.
Somebody laughed and somebody hollered. Somebody gave a whistle of respect and somebody shouted out in a singsong language Michael had never heard before. Then the clatter of utensils on plates continued, cigarette smoke puffed into the air, and the black-bearded second mate burst into the mess hall with one of the cooks and wanted to know who the fuck was fighting in here.
No one said anything. The second mate, a Spaniard named Medina, stood staring down at the sleeping Olaf. He repeated: who the fuck was fighting in here?
“Hey, mon!” said the black man with the carved nose. He grinned wickedly, showing white teeth sharpened by chewing Jamaican sugarcane. “That big fool, he fall down and bust hisself open! Doan be no fightin’ goin’ on!”
Medina looked around the room for a second opinion, but suddenly everyone was very much enjoying their oily potatoes, greasy eggs and rubbery bacon. He reached out, grabbed a mug of coffee from another table and threw the liquid into Olaf’s face. The sleeping giant began to come around with a hitch and sputter. “You! And you! Get him into a shower! And don’t waste the water!” The two men Medina had pointed out, the very same two who’d nearly had their spines rearranged, grumbled around their cigarettes but they dragged Olaf out of the mess hall through the swinging door. Medina backed away as if retreating from a roomful of wild animals. “Nobody better fight!” he warned, just before he got out.