Pirate Talk or Mermalade (5 page)

He was in want, after your Ma departed, telling stories about her so even the sea could hear.

Watch your bleeding mouth. Ma did not know his wants after you arrived.

That’s what your brother says. Who can know the heart of a woman, especially one like your Ma?

Perhaps it is my brother’s heart that is unknown.

Tell him you’ve seen me treading the waters, go ahead.

I would rush up the mast and shout your name but he’s not onboard, he didn’t take the oath, not seeing the pirate life for what it is, a port a’glitter at every call, swords a’plenty and no landholder taxing every tomorrow. My brother continues his oath against all water by staying off it.

A sea of tears, perhaps.

His letters are smeared, it’s true, but someone else writes them. Quiet, it’s Shanks abroad.

A night catch! What a fisherman you are. I see from all the blood you’ve stuck it well. I’ll finish the gutting and offer you the liver if it’s of a size. Keep your hand on it while I fetch my good knife.

Over now, quick.

Give that back—it is my only shawl, it is the shawl you married me in.

I haven’t had a watch to do for months—we can’t eat a shawl. We must trade it for bone so I can triple our profits.

Go to the ends of the earth, and sail to where the serpents lie. To sell my shawl for an inch of whalebone—bone that’s no good even in a pot!

People pay well for a picture on it—but there won’t be much left after I settle the chits you’ve written clear across the island.

Better than written across my tombstone. How I rue offering you my timepiece for your improvements. For just a look, I said. And you looked and looked.

It was you who took the glass off the works, who pulled the stem.

You said I needed a minute hand, I said there were too many hands already.

Gladness fills me to know those works have stopped. Now I will be cutting this bone, and people will like it. The port is a’swarm with new folk off the boats, and overseers who need to know when to quit the slaves. It’s busier here than London, it’s the center of the world in commerce—and in fashion too.

You thought people would like a feather stuck on the works to brush off the flies.

There are few who appreciate my timepiece thus far, with or without the flies, but with my improvements—

Only fifty-three here keeping the time or the like, less your own watch which I hide, and the ships’ clocks, when they are in port. Even if you wind each of them every week, there are still only fifty-three to divide with Cyrus.

He must be of noble birth to gather the business so quickly, regardless of what he says, a duke at least or a—

He is too handsome by half, yes.

I think you’d be just as pleased to be without a shawl, to show yourself.

Oh, let the ocean take you.

Cyrus, Cyrus—she’s yours.

Close that window, you fool. It’s market day.

I should be down there beside Cyrus, listening to him unhook the watches out of the waistcoats of the wealthy by his very words. Never has there been so many who needed oil in their works or their clockhands reset until he opened his shop.

And where were you?

You had dresses a’plenty until Cyrus washed up.

You did nothing about him, always mooning over getting the bone or moaning over your brother, the foul pirate. Give me that shawl back.

From where, pray tell, do you get the cotton for your petticoats? Stolen of the pirate. The cocoa for your cups in the morning? The pirate. The lovely Madeira? Even the ribbon in
your hair be blue only on account of the pirate’s indigo. The foul pirate.

Don’t you think Cyrus is a handsome one? He’s four years your younger.

Quiet, woman. I’ll not have you scull the bottom for daggers. I will take the
Hope
to the last port if you drive me to it, and leave you behind. I will, even though I fear a voyage at sea more than I fear your noise and bother. Keep the shawl.

Cyrus! Cyrus!

I am so easily rid of?

We have no children. You were too timid.

That is your own doing. Or not doing. But this too can change, knowing the temper of your heart and of Cyrus’ desire. But not with myself as witness. I will sign ship’s papers today, I will.

I believe you will. And let it be a long voyage out—on the
Hope.

My luck will leave with me.

Perhaps—but what if Cyrus will not have me?

You think so little of me that I must bear such a question? Fruit falls from the trees here, winter cannot harm you. You have your shawl. But I would hoard your petticoats too if I were you. The daughters of others are younger.

And eager, even for a tradesman such as he. You should send for me then, as soon as you come into money.

And blacken my future further?

How will you rise in the morning with a starched collar and leggings without holes? And eat as quickly as you
can seat yourself? Answer me.

I now know the compromises a man makes. You are an expensive charwoman who spares me nothing. The years I have spent with you.

Two—no more.

Put that pot down.

I shall not until you receive damage.

Amazon!

The sails like a curtain, stars and then no stars.

My mother loved the line, especially the rope as thick as the mate’s wrist. Even my brother worked the line, in secret, though on land, not the sea. You’d like my brother, though you’d put fear into him with all your fierce tattoos.

A man must be his own placard if he has lived out a legend. Rain behind that swell of stars. There—through the straights.

A squall?

A squall.

That last lightning nearly stopped my heart.

Those were good flashes.

Luggams says in the worse of storms, the lightning goes green and runs up the rigging.

Hear the singing?

No singing in these straights. Luggams hates the singing.

It can’t be the fish, singing.

Luggams forbids all singing whatsoever now that Shanks is gone. He doesn’t like the caterwaul of cats neither but cats we have to have, for the vermin.

Aye. The pigs we shipped before would at least dance,
they would eat out of your hand for a sniff of bread.

Pigs will eat your hand.

A pirate bunch, pigs. I wish we had some still.

If you eat at all, best eat in private, with yourself alone on the poop deck, or else someone will fight you for it.

Not for me the poop deck. The stink!

Clean as the Pope’s hand. All that is left to eat is shoes, and those who have them have chewed them soft as chamois.

I think Luggams chews on gold coin.

His teeth show it. A doubloon on a starving ship is as good as a shell cast upon a beach.

The second mate’s tied a Spanish coin to his line to lure the fish.

Good luck to him! I do miss the turtle’s banging.

A great turtle it was, two hundred weight if it were one.

Now there’s a beast—it didn’t eat for four months and still tasted sweet.

I once had luck fishing in the night. Once only, and didn’t eat it, though the fish be bigger than even that turtle.

Why not, by the boils of St. Augustine!

You don’t hear the singing?

No songs, none. Boil the sand inside that whale’s eye you pocket and eat that.

That’s hardly fish. You’d do better to keelhaul yourself and pray you scrape barnacles off the bottom of the boat with your chest. They attend only to god, these fish below.

Minister fish, a whale. The second mate will catch nothing.

Or the fish will catch him, like Shanks, out from the bottom of a wave. That shark leapt like a marlin to catch him. I felt sorrow for the shark, having Shanks to chew. Here, wet this bit of knot and snap it at the watch in the crow’s nest. Leeward, now.

Those were real curses. My brother used to say pirates cursed for nothing, just to put fear into anyone’s hearing, but I think we curse most often to hear ourselves alive.

More like fiends than men. Let us curse altogether and get the sails up.

Bloody sails. I do miss the Yo, ho, ho. I wish Luggams would have it.

Turn your head thus and sing yourself:

Mind the line there.

I’ll bury my gold and live out my days full to the ears with grog and no one will come around accusing me.

To have lost every penny of the last run.

They were bigger than us.

Bigger, ha. Too bad about the booty. You voted for Madagascar?

The Cape, the Cape is the way. Prizes going to the bottom of the ocean for want of pirates at the Cape.

We’ll need a heap of wind to get there.

And a bit of bread or a haunch. With a spit turning right on deck, and dandyfunk, and flip in our cups to the top.

Gunpowder punch! Wait, the line be fouled there.

I’ll lend you a hand. That last island we tried, there was a lad who swam out—He looked so like yourself. A copy in black.

So they say. ‘Tis a favorite island of mine, it is. I’ve stopped and gone down a dozen times.

Others have called it a little Boston, after you.

Once or twice, I admit, we’ve had to pull anchor in haste. See the dawn star off port?

Aye.

That’s no storm coming before it with the daylight—a sail’s upon us.

Ahoy!

Ship ahoy! Arm yourselves!

It’s a terrible moment when you thrust your head over the side, a-scrambling for purchase when they could stick your throat so easy—

Aye, and we go ahead in this wind so slowly you’d think we were towing our pots astern and the mattresses.

Huzzah!

Ocean makes me sick.

Grog makes you groggy. Land made you landbound. Drink a little saltwater to let the sea settle in. Pirates always take a dose just before the swells start.

I won’t fall for drinking one of your wee grogs a second round. There I was, about to land and start a new life—

Of clocks and watches! Not even your beloved bone. I’ve saved you twice tonight, once from the other cutthroats aboard, and once from your own life.

Did you have to hit me bang on the pate quite so hard?

You’ll get used to it.

I’ll never be getting used to taking blows from my own brother.

This is a pirate ship.

Yes, yes, so they say. Just make up a paper that declares you took me by force then I’ll give you no trouble. You have me now, brother, in the burden of a prisoner.

Hush. You’re no prisoner. Luggams remembers you. He’s taken you on to pull my mate’s line.

Is that so? I am sorry to have killed your mate.

You did not have to run him quite through.

I did! I did have to run him through! He would’ve done the same to me.

My mate was fair that way, though you would have liked him. From Boston, where the Tattoo King put his marks upon him. Here, take the sail hand-over-hand with the needle and mend these exploded holes. At least the man had sons a-plenty.

And you have regained a brother.

But lost a cutlass.

He fell to the deep at my single thrust.

He did. Throw me the line.

But I thought pirates kept chests full of weapons, everything shared, that’s what I thought, and then divided it in the pirate way, which means, for one, I should have seen a bit of what we were hauling that you ate right after the taking? At least a bit of it. When does the cheese from my boat stop at me, with the haunches of lamb, sheep and beef, given out in the proper pirate’s way? On a regular vessel at least they offer around the gristle.

Stop, you must stop. Every boat rides its own sea, whatever it becomes. Do you think we sign in a circle, the way they tell it, or swear upon a hatchet instead of the Bible? Smith, the quartermaster, tells it true.

They call him quartermaster, this lawless brine-mouthed bunch?

This be the pirate life, says Smith, the new pirate’s: he should be tarred so that his skin turns pale, as pale as a turnip—that is, after all the peeling—and that it is the paleness that kills the cowards and not the sharks he screams to be fed
to, all blown up with white after the tar’s gone, and bleeding red blood through the skin. Pale as a turnip—it is a nice turn of the tongue. That’s the start of a pirate life got right, the way Smith tells it. You wait.

A story like that’s why I prefer belowdecks, I’ll take belowdecks anytime. Without the sea in my face, I can think of the land.

No air below except a rat’s cough. I’m for sleeping under the sheets midships and chancing I’ll get my throat cut when someone slips on board to right the wrongs and retake the treasure, such as we did on your boat. A great wont of treasure on your boat I might add, unless we count the watch plaitings.

Treasure for some. You didn’t have to throw every bale over.

You won’t be wanting those plaitings now anyway, that job is gone. You can get the boat’s works set straight for us instead.

Set me off on land!

Here be the Smith I was telling you of.

The two of ye quarrel so, you’d think you were made of one mother, bad luck to us and to you both. They say brothers save each other and none of the rest.

We are not so much brothers, not really. Not according to our Ma. Besides, we quarrel away, and stick the loser.

I fought with the brothers Bungleston who raged the seas the back end of the ‘80s. Aye, I served under the Roger—not the jolly, mind you—and for fun, one brother would take a plank and magic it right across the water, over one wave and
another, and sometimes he would signal to us, all the while sinking into the foam. Fish took the other brother when he, for spite, at last put the board under himself and sank straight down. Brothers they were for sure.