Pirate Freedom (21 page)

"You're a tall, strong young man, Father. The young men at Saint Teresa's stand in awe of you. So Father Houdek reports, and I find it easy to believe. Have you no pride in that?"

"Strength is good only when it's used for good, Bishop Scully. Strong men—I've known many stronger than I am—soon learn how little strength they really have. As for my height, I've spent my nights sleeping on the floor or in beds that were too short for me. I'd be shorter if I could."

He nodded, his thumb and forefinger stroking his lower lip. "Saint Teresa's is a large parish, Father."

I nodded and said I knew it.

"A large parish, and a most difficult one. I would like to give the best priests the best parishes. Staffing is a persistent worry, and I do not have that luxury."

"I understand," I said.

"A large and difficult parish, but that is not the sole reason Father Houdek has two assistants. Two?" The bishop shook his head. "Two, when priests are so few? When so many parishes have none? I trust that you are learning from his example, Father."

I said I tried to take advantage of every educational opportunity that came my way—something of that sort.

"You have given thought, I am sure, to your conduct when you have a parish of your own."

"Not as much as I should, perhaps, Bishop Scully. That day seems very remote."

He smiled, lips tight. "Give more thought to it, Father. It may come sooner than you think."

There is so much to write, and I may have little time in which to write
it. I am losing patience with this pen, wishing I could kick and whip it, like a donkey. Where are the jibs for a ballpoint pen advertising a funeral parlor? Where are its studding sails?

VERY WELL
. I left Capt. Burt and returned to the
Rosa
with the men he had given me. The wind was rising, and the
Weald
, which had planned to remain in our company until dawn, was quickly lost to sight. Ships menace one another in a high wind, and night was coming on, which would make the danger worse.

So that was how it began. Capt. Burt and I had agreed that Rombeau would not come so long as the
Weald
was in sight—it looked Spanish because it had been. He loaned me a dozen good sailors, all English save for O'Leary, and we shook hands and agreed to meet at the end of September.

That night, as the
Rosa
rolled and pitched and every timber groaned, I explained as much as I thought wise to Jarden and Antonio—and to Azuka, too, because Jarden had brought her and I did not want to send her away.

"There are a couple of points that worry me," I told them. "One is Rombeau. Captain Burt thinks he'll come back once
Weald
's gone. So do I, or I think he'll try to. But Rombeau can't navigate. We need to keep a sharp lookout every moment of the day and night, and get close enough to take a good look at every sail we see."

Antonio fingered his beard. "And if the sail proves to be a Spanish warship, Captain?"

"We'll be flying the Spanish flag," I explained. "That won't bother Rombeau—he'll expect it."

"We cannot outrun them, not even with a jury mast."

"Which we do not have yet," Jarden added.

I shrugged. "We won't try to outrun them. You speak a good deal of Spanish, Antonio, and I speak good Spanish. We're the
Santa Rosa
, out of Havana. We're in trouble and we need help."

Jarden said, "What if they offer to provide it, Captain?"

"We'll accept it, of course. And thank them with tears in our eyes. But they won't. The worse our setup looks and the more help we ask for, the more they'll want to get away."

Jarden rubbed his hands. "Ask for water, Captain. Every ship needs it and no one wants to give it."

Antonio nodded. "And medicines. A physician, if they will be so good as to lend us one."

"Right," I said. "A doctor and medicine, and we'll swear we have nothing infectious on board. The more we swear, the less they'll believe us. We'll keep most of the crew below—the fewer men they see, the better."

Azuka said, "What is needed? Ask for that."

"I am," I told her. "I will, just in case they give them to us."

Antonio said, "Two things troubled you. The other?"

"We'll have to sail down the coast for thousands of miles and 'round the Horn. What if the men won't do it?"

Everybody got quiet, but I was so busy thinking myself that it did not bother me.

Finally Jarden said, "I cannot navigate either, and I have been considering what I might do, were I in Rombeau's plight. Do you wish to hear it, Captain?"

I said, "Sure, go ahead."

"Very good. I am Rombeau. I cannot navigate, but I can read. I have the logbook. In the logbook I have the last position. It is your custom, Captain, to compute the position each morning and each evening. Thus I, Rombeau, know the point at which my ship separated from this one."

Azuka looked puzzled. Antonio said, "He might guess at the direction of the gale, east or northeast. Knowing that, and the direction in which he fled the Spaniard, he might achieve something. Or might believe he might."

"I might," Jarden agreed, "but I would not know where to stop."

"True."

"I will seize a Spanish ship," Jarden told us. "A rich ship would be good luck, but any ship larger than a piragua. There will be someone who navigates. It must be so, unless he was killed in fighting. Perhaps I will put the others in the boats. Perhaps I will kill them. But him I will keep. You must guide me to this place, I will tell him. From it, you must set a course for Spain. If we find the
Rosa
, I shall free you. If we do not, your life will be forfeit."

Azuka asked, "Is the entry in your book the same as that in the other book, chéri?"

Jarden shook his head. "The final entry will have been made before we seized this ship, but it will be near it."

I said, "I remember what my last entry was. That will be better. We'll sail back there."

Antonio said, "This Rombeau will sail but slowly, if he is of sagacity."

I agreed. "Either that, or turn back and retrace the last half of his route."

Azuka asked, "Those men? They must be told?"

Jarden said, "Told what? That we're hoping to find the
Magdelena
? Yes. Of course."

I said, "About Captain Burt and the treasure fleet from Peru—the thing I was worried about telling them. I see what you mean, Azuka."

"You must sharpen their hunger, Chris. Say the gold. The galleons. Later, Veracruz. More later, the mules of Panama. We will go south along the land to be rich. Do not say how far."

I agreed, and that is what we did—or tried to do.

FR. HOUDEK IS
well liked here, but we get fewer at mass every Sunday. That is how it seems to me. The people like him, but do not come. This morning, I said the ten o'clock mass. Until today, I have been careful to speak out as little as possible, keeping my homilies brief and talking only about the gospel for the day (or the bazaar). Today I was brief, too, but I talked about marriage, the sacred character of it and the need for repentance. Without it there can be no forgiveness.

Where there is no repentance, forgiveness is only permission by another name. I hope I said that.

The human heart is like a bird, I said. It flutters from this place to that— then back to the first as often as not. Poets say we must follow our hearts. Anyone who reads their lives will soon see where that leads and where it ends.

The people were not smiling when mass was over. I shook their hands as
I always do, standing in the blessed winter sunshine outside the doors. I hate doing it, but it is my duty and I try to do it well. Usually someone says how hard my hand is. No one did that today.

Maybe it would have been better if they had smiled.

SOON, VERY SOON
now, the communists will fall. Then I will begin the long voyage back to her.

RETURNING TO OUR
old position meant sailing against the wind, and that meant tacking this way and that, in a ship without a mainmast. I would be lying if I said we gained with every tack we made. Often enough we gained nothing, and sometimes we actually lost, thrown back by the wind. Half the watch was putting up the jury mast, a poor stubby thing but the longest spar we had. It is no easy matter to tack a square-rigged ship, so we put a gaffsail on the jury mast. Tacking means sailing as close to the wind as possible, and one always wishes to sail a little closer. Another point, half a point. I prayed for both of those.

We made long tacks, of course, an hour this way and two that way. With our crew we had to, and Antonio proved his worth once and for all. Jarden and the quartermaster wanted to throw half the cargo overboard. That would have hurt more than it helped, I think. Riding deep gave the keel more bite.

We saw nothing that first day, but by the end of it the jury mast was up and the new gaffsail filling, and we had a handier crew than the one that had eaten breakfast that morning. One of the good things about a gaffsail is that the gaff can reach higher than the mast. With a short mast like ours, that is a great advantage. There are bad things, too, but that good one was plenty good enough for me just then.

Sleeping was a problem. Jarden wanted to give me the captain's cabin. I would have felt like a bully if I had taken it, and if I had shared it with him he would have wanted to give me the bunk while he slept on the floor with Azuka. I ended up sleeping on the quarterdeck aft of the wheel, saying I was worried that the jury mast would not hold in a blow, and that we might pass the
Magdelena
in the dark. None of it was true, although the last came near it.

In one way my sleeping on deck like that was good, but it was bad in
another. When I finally stretched out on my folded canvas, I never guessed that it was the beginning of a night I would never forget. Each night in the rectory, when I have brushed my teeth and gotten into my pajamas, I cannot help remembering that one. No other night of my life has been quite like it. Let me start with the good.

The night sky was as clear as crystal, and there was no moon. I looked out into the vast universe, saluting suns and families of suns far away, and watched the planets creep among them—bloody Mars, and Venus radiant and pure in her robe of cloud. For the first time in my life I really understood that I rode a planet like those, that Earth and I were swinging through the dark vault even when we smiled in the sunlight. All my life I had thought of Heaven as a vague place far away, a mysterious land outside the universe where God sits a golden throne. That night I realized that Heaven is not far away at all—that Heaven is wherever God is, and that God is everywhere. That every human soul is His throne room.

Hell is right here, too.

The artists of the Middle Ages painted allegories, we say. What really happened was that they saw more clearly than we do, and painted what they saw—angels and devils, beasts, and half-human monsters like me.

How long did I lie there staring up at the stars? It must have been some time, since I distinctly recall their movement across the sky. I knew then that the blessed dead see God face-to-face, and felt that I, too, had seen some small part of what they saw. It was glorious, and beyond my poor powers of description. Eventually I slept.

A woman was caressing me when I woke, and I was naked, or seemed naked, from the waist down. I thought then that I was wrong, that Novia had not been left behind on the
Magdelena
, that she was here with me on this ship. How had I come to make such a foolish mistake? Had I dreamed that she had been left behind? She kissed me and stretched her bare body on mine, and did certain other things it would be wrong for me to describe here or anywhere. It felt good. I would be lying if I said that it did not. There was clean desire in it, and love, too. Real love.

Here at the Youth Center, I have heard boys say that there is good sex and bad sex, but that even bad sex is pretty good. I have had bad sex and they are wrong. They speak as they do because they think it sounds cool. They will change their minds about how it sounds when they get older. I have had bad sex, as I said, but I had none that night.

When I really woke at last, I sat up—and lay down again at once. "Azuka," I whispered, "what are you up to? Jarden will kill us."