Go to the Widow-Maker (94 page)

In the hatchway up out of the saloon he stopped on the little stairs, rested both arms at shoulder height on the coach-roof and looked up at the sky, the stars. There it was. She had just completely changed. And so suddenly. But why,
why,
WHY?
Why
so suddenly? The faceless spectre rose up before him again, nude, with a tremendous hard-on. He was convinced now that she had done it. She really had; and was trying to make it up. How could he ever forgive her?

Suddenly he realized, in a totally cold objective analytic way, that the knife of rage he had felt below (and had swallowed) a moment ago, when she had said something about
Hunh, your heroes,
had been caused by the
plural,
her
plural
usage, which of course included Grointon. He continued to stand, still resting on his arms on the coachroof, still looking up at the clear sky and the stars.

“Hello, kid,” Bonham said from behind the wheel, in the light from the binnacle.

Grant sat down beside him behind the wheel, on the bench there with its new plastic cushions. It had gotten colder and Bonham had put on a jacket. Orloffski had made up his bed on the coachroof, apparently as far aft as possible to give the Surgeon privacy, and Grant could see him lying there crossways in his bag just aft of the mainmast under the boom. Cathie Finer, also in a big jacket now, was asleep tucked up in a stern corner of the cockpit near to Bonham, a whiskey bottle beside her. “You didn’t do very damned much with the downstairs, the ‘belowdecks,’” he said after a moment. One particular day he himself and Lucky had seen Bonham in town with Cathie and the Surgeon and his girl having a long leisurely lunch at the most expensive restaurant in town, which meant of course that Cathie was paying.

“I told you we had a lot more interior work than expected,” Bonham said.

“It doesn’t look like you did
anything
,” Grant said.

“Painted two walls of the saloon,” Bonham said. He moved the big wheel one spoke, one exact spoke handle, to the starboard from where he slouched easily behind it.

Grant looked at the lighted compass in its binnacle. They were still running a little bit west of southwest by south.

“We’re passing over Mackerel Bank,” Bonham said. “Dived there couple of times. Fourteen to nineteen fathoms.” Grant automatically translated this into feet: eighty-four to a hundred and fourteen. “There’s nothing but open water between us and the Pedros now,” Bonham went on.

Grant looked at the compass again. “You’re playing with fire,” he said after a moment or two.

“Always have played with fire.”

“What if Sam finds out?”

“How’ll he find out?”

“She might tell him.”

“No. Why would she tell him?”

“Christ, man!” Grant exclaimed angrily, but softly. “Sam
loves
you! You’re his
hero!”

“So?”

“But that makes you the best choice, you dumbhead. And then she’d tell him to hurt him!”

Bonham turned his head to look at him and screwed up his eyes. “I never thought of
that!”

“Because you don’t think much. Why’d you have to pick on her?”

“Didn’t pick, I
was
picked.”

“Even so. You ought to
like
Sam.”

“Like Sam! Hell, I
love
Sam! I wouldn’t be here running this sweet smooth lady along like this if it wasn’t for
Sam!”

“Then how can you do his old lady?”

“Every man has got to look after, handle, and take care of his own pussy,” Bonham said.

“Is that the rule? Is that the way the big he-men do it?”

“That’s the way
life
does it.”

“Well, I sure wish you hadn’t picked on her. You’re liable to lose your whole—”

“I told you, I didn’t pick. I
was
picked.”

“Well, I wish you’d of unpicked yourself, then. You’re liable to lose schooner and all. Can he call in that loan? Foreclose it?”

“I don’t know. Have to look. When we get back to GaBay But I don’t think so.”

“Then there’s that other $10,000 coming up,” Grant said, shaking his head. “What about Orloffski? Does he know?”

“He might suspect it. What about your wife?”

“She was the one who told me first,” Grant said with a sad smile. “But I already suspected it myself. You weren’t too terribly careful, Big Al.”

Bonham turned his head away again from the binnacle, and looked at Grant, and suddenly those murky strange stormcloud eyes of his actually blazed. “There are times in a man’s life when he just doesn’t give
a damn.
About anything. Consequences, or anything else. And I guess that’s the way I am now.”

“—But you’ve worked all your life for this; this ship, the company,” Grant put in. “It’s been your dream.”

“I know it. But I like this too.” He inclined his head down toward the sleeping Cathie. “I like it a lot. And I’m gonna keep on with it. For the rest of this trip certainly. And afterwards, now and then, if I can.”

He looked back at the compass. Suddenly, but easily, from his slouch, the big man moved the big wheel again, two spoke handles, then a further half spoke handle, to the starboard.

“Well, if it’s like that,” Grant said. He was thinking about what Bonham’s wife Letta had told Lucky that time about Bonham. How did it all fit? How did it all hang together? He wished he knew. But he couldn’t see through it.

“I could talk to her about it,” Bonham said in a very low voice. “Telling him, I mean.”

“I wouldn’t
talk
to her. Openly. But you could feel her out about it a little bit. Of course, you could always quit. Now. Right now.”

“It’s all done,” Bonham said in that same low voice. “Once is enough. So why quit? Anyway, like I told you—”

“I know,” Grant said. “As an old painter friend of mine used to say, Man, I’ve been there.”

“You want to take the wheel a while?” Bonham said with a grin, but he spoke in that same low, beat-down voice.

“You think I could?” Grant said. He felt beat down and sad too, but the prospect of actually taking the wheel excited him anyway.

“Sure. Nothing to it. Just keep her as she goes. Wind’s changing slowly so she’ll move off to port on you a little bit. Let her. Just bring her back with a spoke or two once in a while. Try to keep her right on that littlest marker. That’s southwest three-quarters south. Don’t worry about the degree markings, they’re too small to bother with.” Before moving he slacked the mainsheet a little bit, easing the mainsail a little, then the foresail sheets which led back to the cockpit. “Wind’s moving a little north now, but she won’t get so far north we’ll have to run dead off. Or jibe her. At least not for a while.” Then he moved over slowly, passing Grant the wheel, and then hunched over with elbows on his knees, looking down. Where he was looking was where Cathie Finer was hunched up sleeping. He looked in that same direction a long time. Then he reared up and leaned back on the cushioned bench against the stern decking with a long sigh that seemed to go on a very long time before he stopped it, let it die, kill itself to emptiness, a free-diver’s sigh. Grant recognized it.

After a half-hour’s steering he turned the wheel back over to Bonham and got one of the heavy jackets and sat back down on the stern bench. Finally, though, after a couple of good stiff drinks (against the cold? ah, yes; but which
cold?)
he slid down onto the cockpit floor and stretched out.

He was asleep when they passed the Pedros. But all the action of jibing to bring the wind on the other quarter waked him easily enough. Bonham was still at the wheel, where he had been when Grant dozed off. The wind had swung all the way around, slowly, from north by west almost to northeast, freshening as it hauled, and Bonham had already jibed once while he was asleep because they were now jibing back from port to starboard. From up front Orloffski and the Surgeon hollered back.

“Is there anything I can do?” Grant asked, sitting up. “Can I help?”

“It’s all done,” Bonham said, a little thickly. A gin bottle was clamped between his feet. But his eyes and hands were as bright and fast as ever. “We’ve made the jibe.”

“But you jibed once when I was asleep, and it didn’t even wake me,” Grant said, feeling foolish, or guilty, or both.

“No,” Bonham said in his slightly thicker voice. “No, because I did that one myself.”

“Oh,” Grant said.

“This one was a little harder. What the hell? Let the bums work a little. Know they’re on a cruise, that way. Do you think she would really tell him about it?”

“I don’t know,” Grant said. “I honestly don’t know. I hope not. Maybe she won’t.”

Bonham didn’t answer. And from up front Orloffski and the Surgeon came back cheerfully sleepy to have a shot of Bonham’s gin, and that ended the conversation.— “Well, I don’t give a damn anyway,” Bonham said to Grant. “
Not anyway.”
He said it in the others’ presence, but they of course didn’t know what it referred to.

“You want me to spell you?” Orloffski asked cheerfully in his brutal way.

“No,” Bonham said, “Maybe I’ll wake you later.” The wind had fallen off, but they still were moving along pretty good, he said, and anyway when morning came, they’d finally begin to get the Trades. “Might have to come about again, when the trades come up. But then again, maybe not.”

That must have been two-thirty or three. Grant had himself a shot too and went back to sleep, as did the Surgeon and Orloffski. Bonham was still at the wheel.

Grant woke at three-thirty. It was at four-thirty in the morning that the two women, Irma and Lucky, came running up into the cockpit from the saloon, both of them totally hysterical. More slowly, reluctantly, Ben came along behind them.

Grant had half dozed off. He realized right away, as soon as he was full awake, which took four or five seconds, that he must have totally underestimated Lucky’s fear at being at sea aboard the sailing ship. She had told him she was scared, but he had thought she had meant it only rhetorically, or half-rhetorically. Now he ran to meet her as she came up out of the saloon hatchway hollering “Stop!” with Irma right behind her and yelling “Stop!” too. Grant grabbed her at the head of the little ladder, forcing Irma—and the distraught-looking Ben behind her—to stop in the narrow hatchway.

“Cut it out! Cut it out!” Grant yelled, shaking her a little. “Now what the hell’s the matter?”

“Look! Look!” she yelled back, pointing. Her eyes were so wide as to seem almost sightless. Grant followed her pointing arm, turning around and seeing as he did so Bonham still behind the wheel, and watching them—and as he turned saw what he and Bonham had been looking at for almost an hour: about a mile off their port bow a big freighter or tanker, a veritable Christmas tree of running lights, was slowly moving toward crossing their bows toward the north. They were in one of the main North and South American shipping lanes now, and had seen two other such vessels in the past hour, although both of these were much further north and had already crossed them before being sighted.

“I told you this goddamned Bonham was crazy!” Lucky cried. “We’re going to hit that ship! We’re going to hit it!”

“We’re not,” Grant yelled at her. “It’ll be a long time past us by the time we get to it, cross its course. Now sit down,” he said more quietly. “Sit down, all of you, and tell me what started all this off.” He was thinking privately that he wished she had not said that about Bonham. It should not have been said, not in Bonham’s hearing anyway. It would almost certainly make trouble later on. For the moment anyway Bonham said nothing. He continued on his course. The freighter (or tanker) continued on its, approaching the line of their course somewhere off in front of them.

It was easy to see how it could have frightened them, even Ben too. They knew nothing about sailing, and did not realize that, with the relative movement of the two vessels, and the schooner’s slow speed, the ship would have crossed their course a long time before they got to its course. Finally he got a drink down them, and heard their story. Lucky had waked up, for no particular reason, and in getting out of her tiny cabin door had disturbed and waked up Irma, and naturally Ben. The three of them had come up to sit in the saloon for a while (Cathie’s bunk there had not even been made up)—and of course the first thing they had seen through the large ports was the lighted freighter (they could make out that it was a freighter now, not a tanker) appearing big as all hell, and looking as though it would run into them. It had panicked them all.

“Well, it won’t,” Grant said. ‘Trust my word. And trust Bonham’s—Al’s—knowledge. And ability.” From the wheel Bonham spoke for the first time. But before he did he gave Lucky a long, burning look which, while it did or said nothing actually, made Grant nervous about the future of the cruise. He didn’t like it.— “I hate to have to remind
anybody
of this,” Bonham said mildly, “but I am
actually, legally
the captain of this ship. Any decisions that are to be made are my responsibility, and in fact—in law—
are my
decisions. And any orders that I give to anybody
are
orders, and have to be carried out. At least while we’re at sea.”

“That wouldn’t help us if we ran into that great big goddamned ship,” Lucky said pertly.

“No. But it would still be
my
responsibility,” Bonham said. “And it would also be
my
responsibility to save you, at the risk of—at the
cost
of—my own life. That’s my honor and my duty as a sea captain, as master of this vessel.” He moved the wheel a spoke or two to starboard, actually turning in the collision direction of the approaching freighter. “That freighter will have passed our course at least a half an hour before we reach his course. And in fact will probably be damn near out of sight to the north by the time we do reach his course.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Lucky said, in a crestfallen, sincerely contrite voice.

“That’s okay,” Bonham said mildly. But there was an increased distance, coldness, in his voice. The damage, Grant thought, the damage of Lucky’s first—even if hysterical—remark, had been done. He got another drink down the three of them, pouring the whiskey into the already used, slightly muggy plastic cups in the cockpit. Cathie Finer had waked up with all the commotion and was now sitting up, and accepted a drink herself, but she said nothing except a hello with a small smile.