The Sea is My Brother (11 page)

Bill sat up and grinned sheepishly.

“By George,” he mumbled aloud, “I might at that!”

“Might what?” asked the other seaman, who was awake and sitting up with his legs dangling over the bunk rail.

Bill turned a bashful face, laughing.

“Oh I was only muttering to myself.”

The young seaman said nothing. After a strained pause, he at length spoke up.

“This your first trip?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell time is it?” asked the youth.

“About nine o'clock.”

There was another silence. Bill felt he had better explain his strange behavior before his focastle mate should take him for a madman, but he couldn't conceive of any explanation. The young seaman apparently overlooked the incident, for he wanted to know why in hell they weren't ashore getting drunk.

Everhart explained that he was waiting to go out with two other seamen in a half-hour.

“Well, I'll be in the mess. Pick me up on the way out,” directed the youth. “My name's Eathington.”

“All right, we'll do that; my name's Everhart.”

The youngster shuffled off lazily: “Glad t' meetcha,” he said, and was gone.

Bill vaulted down from his bunk and went to the sink for a drink of water. He leaned over and thrust his head [out] of the porthole, peering aft along the shed wall. The harbor was still and dark, except for a cluster of lights far across where a great drydock was illumined for its night shift. Two small lights, a red and a blue one, chased one
another calmly across the dark face of the bay, the sound of the launch's motor puttering quietly. From the direction of dimmed-out Boston came a deep prolonged sigh of activity.

“By God!” Bill told himself, “I haven't felt like this in a long time. If I'm going to fight for this new world, where better than on a merchant ship laden with fighting cargoes? And if I'm going to lay my plans for a new life, where better to devise them than at sea—a vacation from life, to return brown and rugged and spiritually equipped for all its damned devious tricks!” He paced the focastle silently.

“And when I get back,” he thought, “I'll keep my eyes open . . . if there's anything insincere afoot in this war, I'll smell it out, by George, and I'll fight it! I used to have ideas a long time ago—I had spark: we'll see what happens. I'm ready for anything . . . good Christ, I don't believe I've been as downright foolish as this in a long time, but it's fun, it's new, and Goddamn it, it's refreshing.”

Bill stopped in the middle of the room and appraised it curiously, adjusting his spectacles; “A ship, by George! I wonder when we sail . . .”

Laughing voices broke his reverie; it was Nick Meade and Wesley coming down the gangway.

“All set, man?” cried Wesley. “Let's go out and drink some of my old man's whiskey!”

“All set,” said Bill. “I'm just sitting around trying to accustom myself to the fact I'm on a ship . . .”

They went down the gangway and into the mess hall. A group of soldiers sat drinking coffee at one of the long tables.

“Who are they?” asked Bill curiously.

“Gun crew,” raced Meade.

Young Eathington was sitting alone with a cup of coffee. Bill waved at him: “Coming?” he shouted, adding quietly to Wesley: “He's in my focastle; mind if he comes along with us?”

Wesley waved his hand; “Free booze! More the merrier.”

They passed through the galley, with its aluminum cauldrons, hanging pots and pans, a massive range and a long pantry counter. One big cook stood peering into a cauldron with a corn cob pipe clamped in his teeth; he was a big colored man, and as he stood ruminating over his steaming soup, his basso voice hummed a strange melody.

“Hey Glory!” howled Nick Meade at the giant cook. “Come on out and get drunk.”

Glory turned and removed the pipe from his mouth. “It's a hipe!” he commented in a rumbling, moaning voice. “You boys goin' out thar in git boozed.”

Young Eathington smiled puckishly: “What the hell d'you think, Glory? We gotta drown down the taste of your lousy soup!”

Glory's eyes widened in simulated astonishment.

“It's a hipe!” he boomed. “A lowdown hipe! Them little chillun are goin' out than in git boozed.”

As they laughed their way down the midships gangway, they could hear Glory resume his humming.

“Where's everybody on this ship?” asked Bill. “It's deserted.”

“They're all out drinking,” answered Meade. “Glory's probably the only one on board now. You'll see them all tomorrow morning at breakfast.”

“Saturday night,” added Eathington.

They were descending the gangplank.

“Hear what that big boy was singing?” Wesley said, “Them's way down blues. Heard that singing in Virginia long time ago on a construction job. Way down blues, man.”

“Where we goin'?” asked Eathington, tilting his oiler's cap at a jaunty angle.

“My old man's saloon in the South End.”

“Free booze?” added Everhart, adjusting his glasses with a grin.

“Free booze?” howled Eathington, “C'mon, I'm not complainin' . . . I blew my last pay in a Charlestown poolroom.”

In the street, they strode rapidly toward Atlantic Avenue. Nick Meade, who had signed on as an oiler, asked Eathington if he too had an engine room job.

“No; I'm on as a scullion; signed on yesterday; couldn't get anythin' better.”

“Then what the hell are you wearing an oiler's cap for?” asked Meade.

The kid grinned wryly: “Just for the hell of it!”

Wesley's face lit up with delight: “Give me that hat!” he growled “I'm gonna throw the damn thing in the drink!” He advanced toward Eathington, but the kid broke into a run down the street laughing; Wesley was after him like a deer. Presently, Wesley was back wearing the cap, smiling wickedly.

“How do I look?” he asked.

They took a subway to the South End and went over to Charley Martin's “Tavern.” It was, actually, one of the cheapest saloons Everhart had ever been privileged to enter. The planked floors were covered with sawdust and innumerable spittoons; several drunkards sprawled over their cups in the booths, and it took some time before
Everhart grew accustomed to the fact that one of them was a woman with legs like sticks.

Behind the bar, tuning the radio, was a man in a bartender's apron who looked very much like Wesley, except for his white hair and heavy jowls.

“There's the old buck,” said Wesley, shuffling toward the bar. His father turned and saw him.

It was a very simple greeting: the older man raised his two hands and opened his mouth in a quiet, happy gesture of surprise. Then he advanced toward the edge of the bar, and still maintaining his surprise, he proffered one of his thin hands to his son. Wesley clasped it firmly and they shook hands.

“Well, well, well . . .” greeted Mr. Martin gravely.

“Howdy, Charley,” said Wesley with a thin smile.

“Well, well, well . . .” repeated the silver haired, slim man, still clasping his son's hand and gazing at him with mixed gravity and concern. “Where have you been?”

“All over,” answered Wesley.

“All over, hey?” echoed the father, still holding Wesley's hand. Then he turned slowly toward a group of men who sat at the bar watching the incident with proud smiles. “Boys,” announced the father, “meet the kid. Drinks are on me.”

As the father turned sternly to his bottles, Wesley had to shake hands with a half dozen grinning barflies.

Mr. Martin ranged glasses all along the bar with the slow flourish of a man who is performing a ritual of deep significance. Bill, Meade, and Eathington took seats beside Wesley. When the glasses had all been filled with Scotch, Mr. Martin poured himself a stiff portion in a water glass and turned slowly to face the entire gathering. A deep silence reigned.

“To the kid,” toasted Mr. Martin, glass aloft.

They all drank without a word, including Wesley. When that was done, the night was on for Wesley and his shipmates, for the first thing the old man did was to refill their glasses.

“Drink up!” he commanded. “Wash the other one down!” They did.

Eathington went to the nickelodeon and played a Beatrice Kay recording.

“My old man was in show business,” he shouted to the room in general; and to prove this he began to shuffle sideways across the barroom floor, cap in one hand and the other palm up in a vaudeville attitude that convulsed Everhart into a fit of laughter; Nick was bored. Wesley, for his part, was content to refill his glass from the quart bottle his father had left standing before them.

Fifteen minutes of this, and Everhart was well on his way to being drunk; every time he would drain his glass, Wesley would refill it gravely. Meade had lapsed into a reverie, but after a long stretch of that, he looked up and spoke to Everhart, stroking his moustache in sensual abstraction: “Wes tells me this is your first trip, Everhart.”

“Yes, it is,” admitted Bill apologetically.

“What were you doing?”

“Teaching at Columbia University, an assistant . . .”

“Columbia!” exclaimed Meade.

“Yes.”

“I was kicked out of Columbia in thirty-five,” laughed Meade. “My freshman year!”

“You?” said Bill. “Thirty-five? I was working for my master's degree then; that probably explains why I didn't know you.”

Nick fingered his moustache and pulled at its ends thoughtfully.

“Why were you thrown out?” pursued Bill.

“Oh,” said Nick flippantly, waving his hand, “I only went there with the express purpose of joining the students' Union. I was kicked out inside of a month.”

“What for?” laughed Bill.

“I believe they said it was because I was a dangerous radical, inciting to riot and so forth.”

Mr. Martin was standing in front of them.

“All set, boys?” he asked solemnly.

“That we are; Mr. Martin,” smiled Bill. Mr. Martin reached a hand over and punched Wesley playfully. Wesley smiled faintly, very much the bashful son.

“Got enough to drink?” growled the father, his bushy white eyebrows drawn together in a sober, serious glare.

“Yup,” answered Wesley with modest satisfaction.

The old man glared fixedly at Wesley for a space of seconds and then turned back to his work with ponderous solemnity.

Everhart had found a new comrade; he turned to Nick Meade enthusiastically and wanted to know all about his expulsion from Columbia.

Nick shrugged nonchalantly: “Not much to tell. I was simply bounced. I got myself a job downtown in a drugstore, down on East Tenth Street. When I found out the other employees weren't organized, I took a few of them up to a Union a couple of blocks away. When the manager refused to recognize our right of union, we sat down; he hired others so the next morning we picketed up and down. You should have seen him howl!”

“Did he give in?”

“He had to, the old crum.”

“What'd you do after that?”

“Have another drink,” offered Wesley to both of them, filling their glasses. When they went back to their conversation, Mr. Martin returned and began talking softly to Wesley in what seemed to Everhart a disclosure of a confidential nature.

“I hooked up with a couple of the boys,” resumed Nick, lighting up a cigarette. “One night we decided to go to Spain, so off we went. We joined up with the Abe Lincoln International Brigade there. Three months later I was wounded outside of Barcelona, but you'd be surprised where. The nurse . . .”

“You fought for the Loyalists!” burst Everhart incredulously.

“Yeah”—caressing his moustache.

“Let me shake your hand on that, Meade,” said Bill holding out his hand admiringly.

“Thanks,” said Nick laconically.

“I wish I'd have done the same,” raced Bill. “It was a rotten deal for the Spanish people, doublecrossed from every direction . . .”

“Rotten deal?” echoed Nick with a scoff. “It was worse than that, especially in the light of the way the whole satisfied world took it! There was Spain bleeding and the rest of the world did nothing; I got back to America all in one piece
expecting to hear fireworks, and what did I see? I swear, some Americans didn't even know there'd been a war.”

Everhart maintained a nodding silence.

“Those foul Fascists had all the time in the world to gird up, and who can deny it today? Franco took Spain and nobody raised a finger in protest. And how many of my buddies were killed for nothing? It wasn't nothing then, we were fighting Fascists and that was all right; but now that it's all over, and we look back on it, we all feel like a bunch of suckers. We were betrayed by everyone who could have helped us; including Leon Blum. But don't think for a moment that any of us have thrown up the towel—the more we get skunked, betrayed, and knifed in the back, I tell you, the more we'll come back fighting, and some day soon, we're going to do the dishing out . . . and the Spanish Loyalists as well.”

Nick stroked his moustache bitterly: “My buddie's dishing it out right now,” he said at length. “I wish to hell I were with him . . .”

“Where is he?”

“He's fighting with the Red Army. After we stole through Franco's lines we crossed the Pyrenees over to France. We knocked around Paris until they picked us up and deported us. From there we went to Moscow. When I
left, he stayed behind; Goddamn it, I should have stayed too!”