Bright and Distant Shores (15 page)

They took a cable car into the Potrero District and alighted a dozen blocks from Irish Hill, the neighborhood where Terrapin was said to board. South of the shipyard and Steamboat Point, it was an enclave of workers' cottages and shacks built
along serpentine hills in the lee of the Union Iron Works and the Gas & Electric Company. The bay hazed at the foot of the hillside, a muted blue-gray. The mud streets were planked and sawdusted, run through with fissures. Coalsmoke plumed out of the ironworks and the frowzy smells of gas and damp laundry were everywhere. In the murky windows of several bleak storefronts handbills advertised vaudeville and a Saturday hayrope boxing match. Owen asked for directions and made for the Big Brown House, a rooming establishment that took in San Quentin parolees and whose proprietor got them jobs in the rolling mill down the hill. Terrapin leased rooms on the top floor year-round and this was where he moored himself between voyages.

Son of a freed Tasmanian convict, Terrapin had a soft spot for former San Quentin inmates with seafaring ambitions. They worked cheap and hard and were generally loyal. He'd been commanding vessels and hauling Pacific cargo—tea, copra, teak, sulfur, Australian wool more recently—for thirty years and knew the South Sea Islands intimately, having spawned illegitimate children from New Zealand to the New Hebrides. The rumor was that he dodged creditors and ex-wives in San Francisco, running a brisk circuit between the steam beer dumps of Irish Hill and the brothels of the Tenderloin. He now owned two-thirds of the
Lady Cullion
outright and took no more than two passages a year. Trade clippers were practically a thing of the past—even if they had auxiliary boilers—but Terrapin refused to change with the times. He called the Suez Canal the Devil's Ditch and vowed to never command a steamer.

Owen and Jethro stood on the balcony where Baz Terrapin slouched against the railing, big-knuckled and half naked, a white towel around his flaccid middle. He was drinking beer before noon and staring into the mire of his glass. “I prefer bottom-fermented beers, like to taste the yeast and hops . . .” He took a swig from his jug of fizzing ale, still dripping from his daily plunge in the frigid bay. “Constitutional swim is what it is. Testicles like
a pair of clams winking shut from the cold. Ah, but the heart expands and pumps . . . gets as big as a Christmas ham. Ticker of a racehorse in here.” He tapped at his rib cage, grinned. His enormous girth, coupled with the constellation of scars and moles spread across his torso, reminded Owen of the barnacled hull of an ancient, waterlogged ketch. He hunkered across the balcony, a hand spread against his paunch, thumb tucked into the edge of the wrapped towel. Tattooed on each forearm was a succession of dates—
Nov 21 '82, Mar 2 '84, Jan 14 '89,
and so on—arranged in perfect columns of blue ink. He took up a small telescope from a bench seat and glassed the bay, his mouth forming a Roman arch. “I'd swim out to it just to see the look on the Alcatraz guards' faces. They got Hopi Indians out there just at the moment. Those docile mother-worshippers can't swim neither.” He moved the spyglass down toward the mill and the works. “I audition crew members from up here. Spy on the Dutchmen coming out of the sugarhouse or the Scotch toppling out of the countinghouse or mechanical-repair yard. I watch the way a man walks with his mates. Way he holds himself. The Irishmen come knockin 'cause all they wants is to leave their twenty-six skirling kiddies and the pasty fat wife and sail away for a set of Tongan kanookas. If you ever worked in a steel mill you'd understand this sentiment.” He swiveled his mass and lowered the spyglass.

Jethro stood in his new dungarees, holding his brown paper parcel, biting and licking his lips.

“This is Jethro Gray, the son of the underwriter, and he'll be coming aboard,” Owen said. “He's a man of science, among other things.”

Terrapin's face fell a little, a squint working into the sun-cracked ravines around his mouth and eyes. “Ship's surgeon? Not usual on a windjammer like this. These ain't the slavin days and the cook knows some of his medicals and surgery.”

“He's no doctor,” said Owen.

“What then?”

Jethro turned his serge cap in his hands. “This is my first time at sea. You can put me to use anywhere you like. I plan to take some samples. Plants and animals. I'll be the ship's naturalist.”

Terrapin adjusted himself through the towel and considered Jethro Gray from head to foot. “I've taken plenty of virgins offshore, working men and prisoners who paid their dues for theft and manslaughter—won't touch rapists and arsonists, mind you, consider it bad luck on a bark to have that kind—but fuck me blue, this one's a buttercup, ain't he? Look at them fingers and hands and the milky-veined arms. He's like a custard tart.”

Jethro said, “I've been studying my maps and have a good sense of direction. Maybe I could be a deckhand when I'm not studying specimens. Sleep in a hammock on the deck. Under the stars.”

Owen stared down at his feet, heard the crinkle of Jethro's nervous hands on brown paper.

Terrapin leaned his massive head back and coughed up a phlegmatic laugh. When he'd regained his composure he lifted the jug of steam beer to his lips and let the situation settle on his tongue. “Makes no difference to me whether you're the King of Siam or the son of the money behind this jaunt, any new crewmate starts out before the mast, as a deckhand proper. No special treatment. You'll be scrubbing and tarring on deck, lovelace. You'll sign articles of waivering just like the San Quentin forgers and muggers. Captain Basil Terrapin and unnamed minority silent partner indemnified against all loss of life and limb et-bloody-cetera.”

“My father's lawyers—” Jethro began.

“He'll sign and note that he's on my docket. Nothing happens to him without my consent,” Owen said.

The captain drained his jug and tightened the cinch in his towel. “Amenable. And what about you, Mr. Graves? What will your assignment be? Heard from Bisky that you was carpenter. I already have a handy carpenter and I got a cook who can also barber and suture a wound shut, as I mentioned prior.”

“Like I said in the wire, I'll be the trade master. I'll direct the coxswain where to make landfall and do all the purchasing. Until we get to the islands I'll help as needed.”

“You can have the steward's cabin, right next to the first mate's. I've never believed in stewards and the men respect me for it. Lord Buttermilk can bunk down with the apprentices because I'm afraid what might happen to him in the fo'c's'le. This afternoon, I'll be up at the shipyards. The
Cullion
is moored up there, having some sail and hull work taken care of. Any return cargo I should know of?”

Owen hesitated, wondered whether Jethro knew that he was assigned the task of bringing back Pacific Islanders for his father's advertising campaign. “Artifacts mostly. I'll fill you in when we get to the Southern Hemisphere. I'm finalizing the island route. We'll start by heading to the Sandwich Islands. No real trading until after that.”

They shook hands and Terrapin showed them to the door, still in his towel.

The
Lady Cullion
was a twenty-five-year-old steam clipper originally built for the tea trade. She was square-rigged, sharply raked in the stem, spanned two hundred feet from gudgeon to bowsprit. At the shipyard she'd had her hull freshly coppered—one of Terrapin's flourishes along with the nymphal figurehead—her masts tarred, and the topgallant sail replaced. Extra ballast of rock and sand had been loaded to keep her at proper trim because she had a tendency to sail high. Despite the repairs the ship looked off-kilter and weary, a sloop-of-war fallen on hard times. Hatch covers were out of plumb, the brass capstans had been lacklustered by salt, the forecastle had the buff of driftwood. Owen and Jethro watched the commotion of the crew loading supplies—crates of tinned meat, dry biscuits, sauerkraut and limes, munitions, sacks of rice and flour, duff, dried apples, kegs of tallow and lamp oil, a dozen wire cages of chickens, a fretful sheep, two sack-bellied
sows. Davey Unsworth, boatswain and rehabilitated kidnapper, stood by the gangway in his oilskins and slouch hat, checking off inventory from a clipboard.

Owen and Jethro had brought their belongings down to the dock and the supply loading slowed as the Chinese rickshaw driver unloaded Jethro's convoy of kidskin luggage. Jethro tipped the Chinaman and took stock of his possessions, unfastening each case or bag to reveal butterfly nets, camera obscuras, flower presses, a japanned tin box of watercolors, sheaves of herbarium paper, specimen jars wrapped in newspaper, barometers, glass beakers, bottles of formalin, dissection instruments, magnifying glasses, a Bausch & Lomb microscope, pillboxes, sketchpads and inks, a small library of science, art, and literature. The seamen slowed their hoisting and watched Jethro squat to check the final two objects: a brass camera with a hand crank on the side and a wooden tripod. Owen stood with his hands on his hips, staring down into the gaping bags, flushed in the face.

“Cinématographe,” Jethro said, looking up. “It's like Edison's Vitascope but made by the French. They're a little ahead on this count.”

“What do you intend to do with it?”

Jethro paused. “Observe.”

“What?”

“Birdlife and whatnot. It also doubles as a projector and I brought some practice reels I made in Chicago. They might entertain the men.”

Owen leaned down a little so that he would be out of earshot of the bosun. “I'll put it to you plainly. I ordered several crates of trade items. Without those items we'll be returning empty-handed. If storage space is lacking, half of this junk will be going over the side. Do you understand?”

Jethro rummaged for something in a leather bag, refusing Owen the eye contact he wanted. “This journey was my father's idea, but I intend to fulfill my own vision for it. We're all
collectors of a kind. You, me, my father. Instead of artifacts I want sketches, glass slides, photographs. A ship's naturalist needs supplies if he's to be of value.”

“To who?”

“Whom.” Gauging Owen's temper, Jethro added, “I went light on maps and almanacs.” He wrapped a muslin cloth around a film canister. “A mounted rare bird or pressed flower—it's just as important as weapons from some lost tribe.”

Owen straightened, decided the San Quentin inmates could hear all they wanted. “This isn't an expedition into unknown waters. You're about a hundred years too late for that, sport. Everything's been discovered out there. Did you think you were going to haul up some ancient sea creature and pickle it?”

The men laughed and Jethro began snapping the cases shut. Owen continued, “And as far as I can tell, you're no botanist or zoologist or naturalist. A dilettante is what your father implied.”

Jethro picked up two bags, one in each hand, and sidled toward the gangplank. “Science has always been kind to amateurs with broad interests. Franklin and Bell spring to mind.” There was something smug and contemptuous in the looped shoulders and wiry voice, the averted eyes, the way they refused to confront or yield. Owen could tell he'd spent his life walking out of rooms in the middle of arguments.

Owen watched him board the ship and the seamen gathered like a silent, slack-jawed chorus. None of them offered him directions or assistance; they were nervous and uneasy in their demeanor, as if a priest had come aboard. Jethro drifted from bulkhead to stern with his monogrammed luggage, seemingly baffled by how to penetrate the ship's entryways and hatches. The first mate, Mandrake Pym, a veteran sailor with no criminal background, watched Jethro dither. Captain Terrapin reclined on a settee in the poop deck charthouse and looked on with quiet amusement, a hand working the fur of an English terrier sleeping beside him.

“Lovelace, you can store your fidgets in the bosun's store if there's any room. The rest will have to go below. But wait until the provisions and chooks are settled in.”

Jethro nodded and set down his bags. “Very well. I'll bring the other bags up and set them right here for now.”

Terrapin let his mouth drop open. “No you won't, pikelet. That's the main deck and it's to be kept clear at all times. There's an order to things on a ship. The
Cullion
isn't a venereal old whore with her skirts hitched up. She's a temperamental lady what likes to be wooed into submission. So we keep her clean and orderly. Go 'ave yourself a cup of chamomile tea and come back in an hour.” The idle seamen chuckled at this and Terrapin gave them a cauterizing stare. The men returned to hauling supplies and lubricating the capstans while Jethro carried his bags back down the gangplank, his head down.

They weighed anchor in the late afternoon, sails furled and the auxiliary engines steaming them out of the blustery bay. When they passed Alcatraz they edged into the no-go around the island and all of the seamen, Terrapin included, stood cheering at starboard, waving to the inmates in the exercise yard. Jethro was settling into the apprentice berth with his butterfly nets and instruments. Owen stood at the bowsprit, watching seabirds pass in formations over the headlands, a thousand specks in the oyster sky. He stared down into the churning depths beneath the prow— like rippled iron before it all drew in and whitened to foam. The clipper opened out into the wide mouth of the bay, tacked to port, the wind rattling the halyards. The open sea wind hit them abeam, like an iodine breath coming across a mirror. It always smelled like death to Owen and yet he couldn't explain the calm he felt whenever he was aboard. It was more than riding above the fathomless deep, the watery oblivion glassing out in all directions. It was the sense of being beyond reach. Sea life was an outer current of land life; it somehow ran parallel and separate. The weeks
between ports were valleys without newspapers, letters, or telegrams. You worked until your limbs ached, collapsed into a hammock each night and swayed into a dreamless state of exhaustion. The days bled together. Meals and weather and the throb of your own thoughts was all that mattered. Sometimes you stood on deck in the faintness before dawn, somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, and felt without body or mind as you watched the line between sea and sky grow visible. He grew introspective at sea. Owen wanted to believe that he was making this voyage to secure a windfall that would set him on track, earn him the right to Adelaide's hand in marriage and a shot at a prosperous future, but he also suspected as the ship furrowed into the great plain of the Pacific that he was avoiding the claims of the present.