1919 (21 page)

Joe sat on the benches on the Common and roamed around among the flowerbeds in the Public Garden, and called regularly at the agent's office to ask about a berth, but finally he got sick of hanging around and went down and signed on as quartermaster, on a United Fruit boat, the
Callao.
He thought it ud be a short run and by the time he got back in a couple of weeks he'd be able to get his money.

On the home trip they had to wait several days anchored outside in the roads at Roseau in Dominica, for the limes they were going to load to be crated. Everybody was sore at the port authorities, a lot of damn British niggers, on account of the quarantine and the limes not being ready and how slow the lighters were coming off from the shore. The last night in port Joe and Larry, one of the other quartermasters, got kidding some young coons in a bumboat that had been selling fruit and liquor to the crew under the stern; first thing they knew they'd offered 'em a dollar each to take 'em ashore and land 'em down the beach so's the officers wouldn't see them. The town smelt of niggers. There were no lights in the streets. A little coalblack youngster ran up and asked did they want some mountain chicken. “I guess that means wild women, sure,” said Joe. “All bets are off tonight.” The little dinge took 'em into a bar kept by a stout mulatto woman and said something to her in the island lingo they couldn't understand, and she said they'd have to wait a few minutes and they sat down and had a couple of drinks of corn and oil. “I guess she must be the madam,” said Larry. “If they ain't pretty good lookers they can go to hell for all I care. I'm not much on the dark meat.” From out back came a sound of sizzling and a smell of something frying. “Dod gast it, I could eat something,” said Joe. “Say, boy, tell her we want something to eat.” “By and by you eat mountain chicken.” “What the hell?” They finished their drinks just as the woman came back with a big platter of something fried up. “What's that?” asked Joe. “That's mountain chicken, mister; that's how we call froglegs down here but they ain't like the frogs you all has in the states. I been in the states and I know. We wouldn't eat them here. These here is clean frogs just like chicken. You'll find it real good if you eat it.” They roared. “Jesus, the drinks are on us,” said Larry, wiping the tears out of his eyes.

Then they thought they'd go pick up some girls. They saw a couple leaving the house where the music was and followed 'em down the dark street. They started to talk to 'em and the girls showed their teeth and wriggled in their clothes and giggled. But three or four nigger men came up sore as hell and began talking in the local lingo. “Jez, Larry, we'd better watch our step,” said Joe through his teeth. “These bozos got razors.” They were in the middle of a yelling bunch of big black men when they heard an American voice behind them, “Don't say another word, boys, I'll handle this.” A small man in khaki riding breeches and a panama hat was pushing his way through the crowd talking in the island lingo all the time. He was a little man with a gray triangular face tufted with a goatee. “My name's Henderson, DeBuque Henderson of Bridgeport, Connecticut.” He shook hands with both of them.

“Well, what's the trouble, boys? It's all right now, everybody knows me here. You have to be careful on this island, boys, they're touchy, these people, very touchy. . . . You boys better come along with me and have a drink. . . .” He took them each by the arm and walked them hurriedly up the street. “Well, I was young once . . . I'm still young . . . sure, had to see the island . . . damn right too, the most interesting island in the whole Caribbean only lonely . . . never see a white face.”

When they got to his house he walked them through a big whitewashed room onto a terrace that smelt of vanilla flowers. They could see the town underneath with its few lights, the dark hills, the white hull of the
Callao
with the lighters around her lit up by the working lights. At intervals the rattle of winches came up to them and a crazy jigtune from somewhere.

The old feller poured them each a glass of rum; then another. He had a parrot on a perch that kept screeching. The landbreeze had come up full of heavy flowersmells off the mountains and blew the old feller's stringy white hair in his eyes. He pointed at the
Callao
all lit up with its ring of lighters. “United Fruit . . . United Thieves Company . . . it's a monopoly . . . if you won't take their prices they let your limes rot on the wharf; it's a monopoly. You boys are working for a bunch of thieves, but I know it ain't your fault. Here's lookin' at you.”

Before they knew it Larry and Joe were singing. The old man was talking about cotton spinning machinery and canecrushers and pouring out drinks from a rumbottle. They were pretty goddam drunk. They didn't know how they got aboard. Joe remembered the dark focastle and the sound of snoring from the bunks spinning around, then sleep hitting him like a sandbag and the sweet, sicky taste of rum in his mouth.

A couple of days later Joe came down with a fever and horrible pains in his joints. He was out of his head when they put him ashore at St. Thomas's. It was dengue and he was sick for two months before he had the strength even to write Del to tell her where he was. The hospital orderly told him he'd been out of his head five days and they'd given him up for a goner. The doctors had been sore as hell about it because this was post hospital; after all he was a white man and unconscious and they couldn't very well feed him to the sharks.

It was July before Joe was well enough to walk around the steep little coraldust streets of the town. He had to leave the hospital and would have been in a bad way if one of the cooks at the marina barracks hadn't looked out for him and found him a flop in an unused section of the building. It was hot and there was never a cloud in the sky and he got pretty sick of looking at the niggers and the bare hills and the blue shutin harbor. He spent a lot of time sitting out on the old coalwharf in the shade of a piece of corrugated iron roof looking through the planking at the clear deep bluegreen water, watching shoals of snappers feeding around the piles. He got to thinking about Del and that French girl in Bordeaux and the war and how the United Fruit was a bunch of thieves and then the thoughts would go round and round in his head like the little silver and blue and yellow fish round the swaying weeds on the piles and he'd find he'd dropped off to sleep.

When a northbound fruitsteamer came into the harbor he got hold of one of the officers on the wharf and told him his sad story. They gave him passage up to New York. First thing he did was try to get hold of Janey; maybe if she thought he ought to, he'd give up this dog's life and take a steady job ashore. He called up the J. Ward Moorehouse advertising office where she worked but the girl at the other end of the line told him she was the boss's secretary and was out west on business.

He went over and got a flop at Mrs. Olsen's in Redhook. Everybody over there was talking about the draft and how they rounded you up for a slacker if they picked you up on the street without a registration card. And sure enough, just as Joe was stepping out of the subway at Wall Street one morning a cop came up to him and asked him for his card. Joe said he was a merchant seaman and had just got back from a trip and hadn't had time to register yet and that he was exempt, but the cop said he'd have to tell that to the judge. They were quite a bunch being marched down Broadway; smart guys in the crowd of clerks and counterjumpers along the sidewalks yelled “Slackers” at them and the girls hissed and booed.

In the Custom House they were herded into some of the basement rooms. It was a hot August day. Joe elbowed his way through the sweating, grumbling crowd towards the window. Most of them were foreigners, there were longshoremen and waterfront loafers; a lot of the group were talking big but Joe remembered the navy and kept his mouth shut and listened. He was in there all day. The cops wouldn't let anybody telephone and there was only one toilet and they had to go to that under guard. Joe felt pretty weak on his pins, he hadn't gotten over the effect of that dengue yet. He was about ready to pass out when he saw a face he knew. Damned if it wasn't Glen Hardwick.

Glen had been picked up by a Britisher and taken into Halifax. He'd signed as second on the
Chemang
, taking out mules to Bordeaux and a general cargo to Genoa, going to be armed with a threeinch gun and navy gunners, Joe ought to come along. “Jesus, do you think I could get aboard her?” Joe asked. “Sure, they're crazy for navigation officers; they'd take you on even without a ticket.” Bordeaux sounded pretty good, remember the girlfriends there? They doped out that when Glen got out he'd phone Mrs. Olsen to bring over Joe's license that was in a cigarbox at the head of his bed. When they finally were taken up to the desk to be questioned the guy let Glen go right away and said Joe could go as soon as they got his license over but that they must register at once even if they were exempt from the draft. “After all, you boys ought to remember that there's a war on,” said the inspector at the desk. “Well, we sure ought to know,” said Joe.

Mrs. Olsen came over all in a flurry with Joe's papers and Joe hustled over to the office in East New York and they took him on as bosun. The skipper was Ben Tarbell who'd been first mate on the
Higginbotham.
Joe wanted to go down to Norfolk to see Del, but hell this was no time to stay ashore. What he did was to send her fifty bucks he borrowed from Glen. He didn't have time to worry about it anyway because they sailed the next day with sealed orders as to where to meet the convoy.

It wasn't so bad steaming in convoy. The navy officers on the destroyers and the
Salem
that was in command gave the orders, but the merchant captains kidded back and forth with wigwag signals. It was some sight to see the Atlantic Ocean full of long strings of freighters all blotched up with gray and white watermarkings like barberpoles by the camouflage artists. There were old tubs in that convoy that a man wouldn't have trusted himself in to cross to Staten Island in peacetime and one of the new wooden Shipping Board boats leaked so bad, jerrybuilt out of new wood—somebody musta been making money—that she had to be abandoned and scuttled half way across.

Joe and Glen smoked their pipes together in Glen's cabin and chewed the fat a good deal. They decided that everything ashore was the bunk and the only place for them was blue water. Joe got damn fed up with bawling out the bunch of scum he had for a crew. Once they got in the zone, all the ships started steering a zigzag course and everybody began to get white around the gills. Joe never cussed so much in his life. There was a false alarm of submarines every few hours and seaplanes dropping depth bombs and excited gun crews firing at old barrels, bunches of seaweed, dazzle in the water. Steaming into the Gironde at night with the searchlights crisscrossing and the blinker signals and the patrolboats scooting around, they sure felt good.

It was a relief to get the dirty trampling mules off the ship and their stench out of everything, and to get rid of the yelling and cussing of the hostlers. Glen and Joe only got ashore for a few hours and couldn't find Marceline and Loulou. The Garonne was beginning to look like the Delaware with all the new Americanbuilt steel and concrete piers. Going out they had to anchor several hours to repair a leaky steampipe and saw a patrol boat go by towing five ships' boats crowded to the gunnels, so they guessed the fritzes must be pretty busy outside.

No convoy this time. They slipped out in the middle of a foggy night. When one of the deckhands came up out of the focastle with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the mate knocked him flat and said he'd have him arrested when he got back home for a damn German spy. They coasted Spain as far as Finisterre. The skipper had just changed the course to southerly when they saw a sure enough periscope astern. The skipper grabbed the wheel himself and yelled down the tube to the engine room to give him everything they'd got, that wasn't much to be sure, and the gun crew started blazing away.

The periscope disappeared but a couple of hours later they overhauled a tubby kind of ketch, must be a Spanish fishingboat, that was heading for the shore, for Vigo probably, scudding along wing and wing in the half a gale that was blowing up west northwest. They'd no sooner crossed the wake of the ketch than there was a thud that shook the ship and a column of water shot up that drenched them all on the bridge. Everything worked like clockwork. No. 1 was the only compartment flooded. As luck would have it, the crew was all out of the focastle standing on deck amidships in their life preservers. The
Chemang
settled a little by the bow, that was all. The gunners were certain it was a mine dropped by the old black ketch that had crossed their bow and let them have a couple of shots, but the ship was rolling so in the heavy sea that the shots went wild. Anyway, the ketch went out of sight behind the island that blocks the mouth of the roadstead of Vigo. The
Chemang
crawled on in under one bell.

By the time they got into the channel opposite the town of Vigo, the water was gaining on the pumps in No. 2, and there was four feet of water in the engineroom. They had to beach her on the banks of hard sand to the right of the town.

So they were ashore again with their bundles standing around outside the consul's office, waiting for him to find them somewhere to flop. The consul was a Spaniard and didn't speak as much English as he might have but he treated them fine. The Liberal Party of Vigo invited officers and crew to go to a bullfight there was going to be that afternoon. More monkeydoodle business, the skipper got a cable to turn the ship over to the agents of Gomez and Ca. of Bilboa who had bought her as she stood and were changing her registry.

When they got to the bullring half the crowd cheered them and yelled, “Viva los Aliados,” and the rest hissed and shouted, “Viva Maura.” They thought there was going to be a fight right there but the bull came out and everybody quieted down. The bullfight was darn bloody, but the boys with the spangles were some steppers and the people sitting around made them drink wine all the time out of little black skins and passed around bottles of cognac so that the crew got pretty cockeyed and Joe spent most of his time keeping the boys in order. Then the officers were tendered a banquet by the local pro-allied society and a lot of bozos with mustachios made fiery speeches that nobody could understand and the Americans cheered and sang,
The Yanks are Coming
and
Keep the Home Fires Burning
and
We're Bound for the Hamburg Show.
The chief, an old fellow named McGillicudy, did some card tricks, and the evening was a big success. Joe and Glen bunked together at the hotel. The maid there was awful pretty but wouldn't let 'em get away with any foolishness. “Well, Joe,” said Glen, before they went to sleep, “it's a great war.” “Well, I guess that's strike three,” said Joe. “That was no strike, that was a ball,” said Glen.