Far Tortuga (5 page)
Authors: Peter Matthiessen
Northeast trades, and casuarinas on the leeward strand, bent away into the west; over Prospect Church veer frigate birds on long black wings. Beyond Prospect, misted by sea spume, Bill Eden Point and Old Jones Bay sink away into the land.
The island turns.
The
Eden
passes from the lee into the white-capped stone-blue chop of the deep ocean.
A wash of white: a wave rises high on the port bow, hangs, slaps, collapses. Bright brown sargassum weed sails by, and a flying fish skips free of the bow, skidding away on thin clear wings into the blue oblivion.
To the west, migrating land birds, spinning north.
Athens, at the helm, is dozing. Vemon is snorting in his bunk. Raib and Brown stare fixedly into the engine hold; they run the new
engines at half speed. Watching his father, Buddy Avers lies on a soft coil of old rope, his hands in an attitude of prayer beneath his cheek. Squatted by the galley, washing coffee cups in a galvanized tin tub, Speedy chatters to himself. On the galley roof, Wodie Greaves sings “Yellow Bird” as he sews his checkered shirt.
Byrum and Will, forward, have hoisted the stunted foresail and the jib, to take advantage of the wind; the sails are grimy, and the foresail has a big patch of dark material under the gaff. Gazing upward at the sails and the blue Caribbean sky, Will lets his pinched face crack open in a grin, ignoring the oil stink on the wind eddies, and the vibration beneath his hard bare feet.
Eden
like a wild horse, Byrum. Got to hang
on
to her.
Not no more. She make eight with a fair wind and both dem diesels, she be doin good.
Mon, I seen dis vessel average eleven mile an hour for two-twenty mile, all de way down to de banks! Good stiff boat! See dat? Don’t throw big sheets of spray every time she roll; she behave nice in any kind of sea.
Well, she a good boat in a quarterin sea, I say dat much. She ride better den de
A.M. Adams;
she ride more straight.
Oh, she a pretty little vessel, mon! Every frame in her Cayman mahogany, every one.
Cupping the rain water in the port catboat, Byrum washes the rope tar from his hands. Will splashes water on his face, but on an instinct straightens slowly and gazes back toward the island. In the ocean sun, the old rain glistens on his cheeks. The permanent tobacco bulge in Will’s jaw gives his face an odd misshapen cast; his rare smile, smiled shyly, bares his stained bent teeth.
Byrum? See dis port boat? She a new boat but she leakin. And dat is because we never took de time to put flowers on de bow before we launched her.
Know something else? We sailin on a Saturday, with a new moon.
Will Parchment nods.
I told him best wait and sail tomorrow, but he say de season gettin away from us already.
Yah, mon. We sailin very late. De
Adams
out dere somewhere in de Cays, but she must be pretty nearly set to sail for home.
In round-rimmed hat of tattered palm thatch, sky-colored jerkin without sleeves and dungarees torn off like britches at the knee, the barefoot mate looks like a sailor of Old Isaac’s time; Byrum, in sneakers and clean khakis and an oil-stained khaki visor cap with emblem of gold anchors crossed on black, is a modern seaman of the merchantmen. Will is a white man, weathered for his age, knotty and wizened. Byrum looks younger than his thirty years; in whitish skin he has the features of a black man, and his gat teeth are helter-skelter in his jaw. From Byrum, everything spills out; he has a big voice, big teeth, big nose, big ears, big wrists and hands, and big pigeon-toed feet.
A.M. Adams
, mon! I bet she got better den three hundred turtle right dis minute!
He stands beside Will, who is still gazing off into the north. The wind nags at the tatters of Will’s hat.
Land sunk out already, Byrum.
She sunk out?
Yah, mon. Land sunk out. All dese years I seen dat Old Rock sink away, and still I wonderin if I ever see her rise again.
Byrum relieves Athens at the helm, as Venus rises.
Dere de evenin star.
Twilight. The men squat in a semicircle at the galley door. Their forks click on tin plates of beans and rice and each has a mug of coffee at his feet.
Vemon appears in the companionway. The sea has sent him reeling off rails, fuel drums, cabin side. Hurting his arm, he looks confused, then curses. At a fuel drum, he clings, panting, glaring at the rest; his shapeless pants snap thinly in the wind.
Look what comin! Smelled de food and out it come!
Smelled dat de work was done, most likely—what say, Vemon!
I say SHIT!
Dat
what I say!
Dat
his
message, dat he give his shipmates
had enough of
your bad mouth down to Honduras!
Ain’t nobody call me for my supper, Copm Raib, dat de kind of ship dis is!
Arms folded across his chest, Vemon is pitched by the sea into the galley door. He is shoved out again by Speedy.
You want supper I give it to you, but get your ass out dis galley!
Listen to dat! Black Honduran! Tellin me what I must do!
Dass right! Black Honduran!
Speedy de cook, he got de right—
No, mon! I cook dis evenin so we can eat, but I never sign on as no cook!
Dass what
he
think! Raib got
dat
fella fooled
good
!
Anyways it mighty fine.
Athens belches.
I never knowed dat black people could cook. (
winks
) Dey ain’t nothin dat dis Speedy-Boy can’t do!
Speedy pushes a plate of food against Vemon’s chest.
Well, my father he left my mother, and den she went down to de copra plantation. When I were six; I were de oldest one. So I learn to cook: call dat school days, mon. With me it were do or die.
Where your partner? Don’t he eat? I knowed he didn’t talk, but don’t he eat?
Brownie? He layin down dere in his bunk. He come when he get hungry.
Copm say in de ship’s articles dey calls him Smith.
Sometime Smith. Sometime Brown. I calls him Brownie. He show up dere in Roatán a few years back, after de hurricane. Plenty like Brown down along de Sponnish shores, don’t come from no place—more and more, like, seem to me.
Dass right. Plenty like dat. No home, no name, got no people anyplace. Just livin along.
Used to be nobody knew his doddy, but now dere’s plenty dat don’t know dere
mother
. Modern time, mon.
Dass right. Just livin along.
So den Brown had no job to speak about, so he come along with me. We learn cotch turtle. And sometimes maybe rig us a few nets, go back to Roatán, cotch couple turtle dere. Green turtle. In de Bay Islands.
Green turtle! What
you
know about it? Mon know about green turtle got to be a turtler! And de turtler come from Grand Cayman!
Hush up, Vemon.
The man called Brown appears on deck; the crew falls silent. He gapes and stretches, then strikes a pose with hands on hips, rocking a little on spread feet, pelvis cocked forward, sombrero tipped down onto his nose. The Captain glares at him.
Well, come along dere, Brownie!
Brown saunters over to the galley, and Speedy fixes him a plate; Speedy says something quiet, and after a moment the man shrugs. He flips his sombrero to the back of his dark head and squats down on his heels to eat. He chews slowly for a little while, then raises his head to speak, but since his mouth is full of food, his utterance is lost. Fork at his mouth, he looks slowly from man to man; uncomfortable, they nod and look away, then get up one by one and scrape their plates over the side and dump them into the galvanized tub before moving aft to the stern.
Brown squats by the galley door, eating alone. In the dark wind overhead, the canvas mutters. The mast rolls.
Speedy rigs a bucket to a line and drops it into the black sea; it draws a phosphorescent streak through the night plankton. He splashes salt water into a tub and tosses after it a cake of mustard-colored soap.
Buddy brings Byrum a plate of food and a mug of coffee, and relieves him at the wheel.
Where de hell de bacon? Don’t we got meat aboard of here?
Will lights the kerosene lantern in the binnacle. The light dimly illuminates the bunks, which are littered with clothes, sacks, a small duffel and a cardboard suitcase. Vemon has the upper bunk on the port side, Athens the lower; Will and Byrum are upper and lower to starboard. The forward bunks, running transversely across the back wall of the wheelhouse, are occupied by Raib and Buddy. Speedy bunks with Brown down in the engine room.
Where dat Wodie sleepin? In de fo’c’s’le?
Yah. Look to me like he some kind of Jonah.
No, mon. He a very nice fella. Kind of fufu, but he ain’t too fool to work with.
Athens and Vemon crawl full-clothed into their berths and curl around the litter: Athens does not remove his cap. His cigarette glows in the darkness; he is smoking as he sings.
I knowed by de way you hold me, darlin
…
Don’t all dat smokin make you cough?
I coughed every day of my life. I used to it. I be coughin in de grave.
Well, lend me a cigarette—we partners, ain’t we?
Here, goddom it—
Never
could
keep money, y’know. Prob’ly you too young to ’member de time when Vemon Dilbert Evers could had bought dat whole stretch of West Bay Beach, from de marl pit in Georgetown to de graveyard in West Bay! I had me dat chance in life and den I lost it. Dat six miles of beach weren’t worth nothin den. Old Honey, she say, Precious—
Precious?
Hon say to me, Precious, dat old sand ain’t never gone to do you one bit of good. I say, Hon, when all my money gone and I am old, I still have dat land, and it better’n nothin. Why, boy, if I knew den what I know now! You hear me, Athens? If I had bought dat beach before de Yankees got to it, I’d be a millionaire! (
sighs
) And now I gettin old, and I got nothin.
Precious! Dat old whore never call him Precious in her life. Call him a lot of things but never call him dat! To hear dis fool run on like dis dat never owned a catboat, even, let alone de money to buy dat beach—
Copm Raib?
Oh, mon, de black mon dat woman took up with were ugly as a gorilla, and she a white woman, mon, so dis upset poor Vemon dere. Dat day in de Standard Bar, Vemon were drunk and usin his mouth de way he do, so dis black fella, he toss some alcohol on our poor old shipmate dere and toss a match after dat, to sot’m on fire, see if dat shut’m up. Well, it were shortly after Vemon left de hospital dat he ask to sail with me down to Honduras. He were very drunk dat day, too, and he told me he not goin to sail away from home without a case of rum, and after dat he told me dat he had papers, and dat a seaman dat had papers ought to get an extra half share, and I told him he could take dem papers—
I hearin you, Copm Raib!
Dass good! Might learn something!
