Lonesome Traveler (11 page)

One o'clock. The S.S.
William Carothers
is sailing to the Panama Canal and Gulf of Mexico.—

One snowy flag of wash flutters from the poop an emblem of the gone-in messmen's silence.— Have you seen them floating out to sea past your commuter's ferry, your drawbridge driving-to-work Ford, scullionish, greasy aproned, depraved, evil, seedy as coffee grounds in a barrel, unimportant as orange peels on an oily deck, white as seagull dung—pale as feathers—birdy—demented raunchy slop boys and Sicilian adventurers of the mustachio Sea? And wondered about their lives? Georgie Varewsky when I first saw him that morning in the Union Hall looked so much the part of the spectral scullion sailing to his obscurity Singapores that I knew I had seen him a hundred times before—somewhere—and I knew I was going to see him a hundred times again.

HE HAD THAT WONDERFULLY DEPRAVED look not only of the dedicated feverish European Waiter alcoholic but something ratty and sly—wild, he peered at no one, was aloof in the hall like an aristocrat of some own interior silence and reason to say nothing, as, you will find, all true drinkers in their drinking sickness which is the reprieve from excitement will have
a thin, loose smile vague at the corners of their mouths and be communicant with something deep inside themselves be it revulsion or shuddering hangoveral joy and wont communicate with others for the nonce (thats the business of the screamingdrinking night), will instead stand alone, suffer, smile, inwardly laugh alone, kings of pain.— His pants were baggy, his tortured jacket must have been crumpled under his head all night.— Low at the end of one long arm and finger hung a lowly smoking lost butt lit a few hours before and alternately lit and forgotten and crushed and carried blocks across shuddering gray necessary activity.— You could see by looking at him that he had spent all his money and had to get another ship.— He stood, slightly bent forward at the waist, ready for any charmingly humorous and otherwise thing to happen.— Short, blond, Slavic—he had serpentine cheekbones pearshaped which in drink of nightbefore'd been greased and fevered and now were pale worm skin—over this his crafty luminous blue eyes slanted looking.— His hair was thin, baldish, also tortured as if some great God Hand of Drunken Night had given it a grip and a yank—skewish, thin, ash color, Baltic.— He had a fuzz of beard—shoes scuffledown.—You'd picture him in an immaculate white jacket hair slicked at the sides in Parisian and Transatlantic saloons but even that could never remove that Slavic secret wickedness in his stealthy looks and's only looking at his own shoe tops.— Lips full, red, rich, pressed and murmured together and as if to mumble “Senevabitch…”

The job call came up, I got the bedroom steward job, Geòrgie Varewski the furtive shivering guilty sicklooking blond got the messman job smiling his wan aristocratic pale faroff smile.— The name of the ship was S.S.
William Carothers
. We were all supposed to report
at a place called the Army Base at 6 A M I went right up to my new shipmate and asked him: “Where
is
this Army Base?”

He looked me over with a sly smile—“I show you. Meet me in bar on 210 Market Street—Jamy's—10 o'clock tonight—we go in, sleep on the ship, take the A train across the bridge—”

“Okay, it's a deal.”

“Senevabitch I feel much better now.”

“What happened.” I thought he was relieved he had just gotten a job he thought he wouldnt get.

“I was seek. All last night I drink every goddam thing I see—”

“What?”

“Mix it.”

“Beer? Whiskey?”

“Beer, whiskey, wine—goddam green d-r-r-ink—” We were standing outside on the great steps of the hall high above the blue waters of San Francisco Bay, and they were there, the white ships on the tide, and all my love rose to sing my newfound seaman's life.— The Sea! Real ships! My sweet ship had come in, no dream but true with tangled rigging and actual shipmates and the job slip secure in my wallet and only the night before I'd been kicking cockroaches in my tiny dark room in Third Street slums.— I felt like hugging my friend.— “What's your name? This is great!”

“George—Georg-ee—I'm a Polock, they callit me, Crazy Polock. Everybody knows it me. I drrreenk and drreenk and vugup all the time and lose my job, miss my ship—they give it me one more chance—I was so seek I couldnt see—now I feel it a little better—”

“Have a beer, that'll straighten you out—”

“No!
I start all over again, I go crrazy, two, three beers,
boom!
I'm gone, I take it off, you not see me any
more.” Forlorn smile, shrug. “Is the way it is. Crazy Polock.”

“They gave me B.R.— they gave you Mess.”

“They give it me one more chance then is ‘Georgie, boom, go away, drop dead, you fired, you no seaman, funny senevabitch, vugup too mach—I
know”
he grins.— “They see my eyes, all shining, they say ‘Georgie iss drunk again' —no—one more beer I cant, —I not vugup now till we sail—”

“Where we goin?”

“Mobile load up—Far East—probably Japann, Yokohama—Sasebo—Kobe—I don know—Probably Korrea—Probably Saigon—Indo China—nobody knows—I show you how to do your work if you are a new man—I'm Georgie Varewski Crazy Polock—I dont give it fuk,—”

“Okay Pal. We'll meet 10 o'clock tonight.—”

“210 Market—and dont get drrunk and dont show up!”

“And you too! if you miss I'll go alone.”

“Dont worry—I have it no money not a senevabitch cent.—No money to eat it—”

“Dont you need a couple bucks to eat?” I took out my wallet.

He looked at me slyly. “You got it?”

“Two bucks sure.”

“Okay.”

He went off, hands in pants pockets humbly, defeatedly, but on swift determined feet hustling in a straight line to his goal and as I looked I saw he really was walking extremely fast—head down, bemused upon the world and all the ports of the world he'd go cut in with rapid steps.—

I turned to breathe the great fresh air of harbors, exulting on my good luck—I pictured myself with grave face pointed seaward through the final Gate of
Golden America never to return, I saw shrouds of gray sea dripping from my prow —

I never dwelt on the dark farcical furious real life of this roaring working world, wow.

IN ROARING BLOODSHOT OF MY OWN I showed up at 10 o'clock that night without my gear just my seaman buddy Al Sublette who was celebrating my “last night ashore” with me.—Varewski was sitting deep in the profound bar drinkless, with two drunken drinking seamen.—He hadnt touched a drop since I'd seen him and with what forlorn discipline eyeing cups proffered and otherwise and all the explanations.—The swirl of the world was upon this bar as I came reeling in on a slant, the Van Gogh boards flowing to brown slat wall Johns, spittoons, scrapetables of the back—like eternity saloons of Moody Lowell and with the same.—It's been so, in bars of Tenth Avenue New York I—and Georgie too—the first three beers on an October dusk, the glee of scream of children in the iron streets, the wind, the ships in the band of the river—the way the sparkle glow spreads in the belly giving strength and turning the world from a place of gnash-serious absorption in the details of struggle and complaint, into a gigantic gut joy capable of swelling like a distended shadow by distance hugened and with the same concomitant loss of density and strength so that in the morning after the 30th beer and 10 whiskies and early morning goof vermouths on rooftops, in topcoats, cellars, places of energy subtracted, not added, the more you drink the more there is false strength, false strength is subtractable.—Flup, the man's dead in the morning, the brown drear happiness of bars and saloons is the whole world's shuddering void and the nerve-ends being slowly living deathly cut in the center
of the gut, the slow paralysis of fingers, hands—the spectre and horror of a man once rosy babe now a shivering ghost in cracking surrealist night of cities, forgotten faces, money hurled, food hurled, drinks, drinks, drinks, the thousand chewed talks in dimnesses.—O the joy of the whitecap seaman or ex seaman wino howling in a Third Street alley in San Francisco beneath the cat's moon and even as the solemn ship the Golden Gate waters shoves aside, bow-watch lonely whiteshirt able-bodied seaman Japan-pointed on the forepeak with his sobering cup of coffee, the pocknosed bum of bottles is ready to crash against narrow walls, invoke his death in nerveless degrees, find his feeble tape of love in the winding stool of lonely gloom saloons—all illusion.

“You senevabitch you d-r-r–onk,” laughed Georgie seeing me roll in eyes wild money dripping from my pants—pounding on the bar—“Beer! beer!”—And still he wouldnt drink—“I no vugup till I get it ship—this time I lose for good the union good get pissyass at me, it's goombye Georgie boom.”—And his face full of sweat, his sticky eyes avoiding cold foams at tops of beerglasses, his fingers still clutching a low smoking butt all begrimed with nicotine and gnarled from the work of the world.

“Hey man where is your mother?” I yelled seeing him so alone littleboyish and forsaken in all the brown complicated millionmoth stress and screaming strain of drink, work, sweat —

“She iss in East Poland with my sister.—She will not come to West Germany because she iss religious and stay hum and is proud—she go to church—I send her nothing—Wat's the use?”

His amigo wanted a dollar out of me.— “Who is this?”

“Come on, give it him dollar, you got ship now,—he iss seaman—” I didnt want to but I did give
him the dollar and as Georgie and I and friend Al left he called me a c-sucker for having been so reluctant.—So I went back to belt him or at least swim around the sea of his insolence a minute and lead him to apologies but all was a blur and I sensed crashing fists and cracking wood and skulls and police wagons in the brown crazy air.—It staggered somewhere, Georgie left, it was night—Al left—I staggered in the lonely night streets of Frisco dimly realizing I must make the ship at six or miss it.

I WOKE UP AT 5 in the morning in my old railroad room with the torn carpet and shade that was drawn over a few feet of soot roof to the endless tragedy of a Chinese family the boy child of which as I say was in continual torment of tears, his pappy slapping him to silence every night, the mother screaming.—Now at dawn a gray silence in which the fact exploded, “I've missed my ship”—I still had an hour to make it.— Picked up my already packed seabag and rushed out—tottering bagashoulder, in the gray mist of fateful Frisco to go catch my racy A Train for over-the-bay-bridge ride to the Army Base.—A taxi from the A Train and I was at the ship's slapping hem, her stack with a “T” for Transfuel on it showed over the gray Navy dumpshed.— I hurried deeper in.— It was a Liberty ship black with orange booms and blue and orange stack—WILLIAM H. CAROTHERS—not a soul in sight—I ran up the weaving gangplank with my burden bag, tossed it to the deck, looked around.—Steaming clatters from the galley straight ahead.—Instantly I knew there'd be trouble when a little ratty German with red eyes began yipping at me about how late I was, I had my railroad watch to prove I was only 12 minutes late but he was raining red sweats of
hatred—later we called him Hitler.—A cook with cool little mustache stepped in:

“He's only 12 minutes late.—C'mon let's get breakfast going and talk about it later.” —

“Goddam guys tink dey can come on late and I wont say nottin.—You gonna be pantryman,” he said suddenly smiling to ingratiate this nice idea of his.

Pantry
shit
I was about to say but the cook took me by the arm: “You were sent out as bedroom steward, you'll be bedroom steward.—Just for this morning do what he says.—You want him to wash the dishes this morning?”

“Yeh—We shorthanded.”

And already I could feel the steam of a hot Oakland day pressing down on my hangover brow.—There was Georgie Varewski smiling at me—“I get it out jacket—we co workers this morning—I sha you.”—He took me down the steel horror alleys to the linen locker, unbearable heat and sorrow that stretched ahead of my bones only lately I'd at least in bum's freedom stretched at will anytime in hobo exile hotel.— I was in the Army now—I gulped down a quick benny to face the music—I saved my job.— From horror groanings and sleepy nausea at the sink with allnight's watch and longshore dishes piled I whammed inside 20 minutes into active keen energetic benevolence asking everyone including the ferret steward questions, gripping people by the arm, leaning, listening to troubles, being kind, working like a dog, doing extras, absorbing every word instruction Georgie said from benzedrine despair to love, work, learn.—Sweating buckets to the steel —

Suddenly I saw myself in the foc'sle mirror, slick-haired, ring eyed, white jacketed sudden-waiter-slave of scows where a week before I'd walked erect longwaist on the Plomteau Local, railroad afternoons in drowsy
gravel spurs giving the pot the come ahead with no lapse in dignity when stooping swift to throw a sweet switch.— Here I was a goddam scullion and it was writ on my greasy brow, and at less pay too.— All for China, all for the opium dens of Yokohama.—

BREAKFAST SWAM BY IN A DREAM, I raced through everything benny wild,—it took 24 hours before I even paused to unpack my bag or look out at the waters and call them Oakland's.—

I was taken to my bedroom steward's quarters by the retiring B.R. who was an old pale skinned man from Richmond Hill Long Island (that is, had taken sun baths belowdecks in the glare of dry linens just laundered and stashed).— Two bunks in one room but horribly placed next to the upsurging fires from the engine room, for a headrest one had the smokestack, it was so hot.— I looked around in despair.— The old man was confidential, poked me:—“Now if you havent been a B.R. before you might have trouble.”—This meant I must look seriously at his white countenance and nod, peer deeply into it, become buried in the vast cosmos of him, learn all—B.R. all.— “If you want I'll show you where everything is but I aint s'posed to cause I'm gettin off—however.”—He did get off, it took him two days to pack, a full hour alone to pull on horribly diseased sad convalescent socks the color was white over his white little thin ankles—to tie his shoelaces—to run his finger through the back of his locker, floors, bulkheads for any speck he might've forgotten to pack—a little sickly belly protruding from the shapelessness of his stick.— Was this B.R. Jack Kerouac in 1983?