The Waking (10 page)

He winks. “Depends on what kind of sugar you’re talking about. Bet Mary’s sweet.”

“
Yeah.”

“
What do you think she’s doing right now?”

I see her still sitting on the bottom step. “Hating me.”

“
Ah, Manny, you got to start thinking positively. The worst is over, right? You’re healing up, and at the rate you keep putting away those doughnuts, you’re gonna be fattened up in no time.”

“
Maybe.” My stomach groans some more. Maybe it’s groaning for more, I don’t know. I stop after my sixth doughnut. “You know I can’t go back with you.”

“
Cap’n told me.” He smacks his lips and licks the mustard off his fingers. “Still, we made it last five days. What are your plans?”

“
Not sure.” I take a swig of Coke, and my eyes water from the carbonation. When’s the last time I had a cold can of Coke?

“
Thinking about going back?”

“
All the time.” It’s like I’ve been through the Middle Passage or something, and the ship is finally on shore. “But, I don’t know, I’m … not sure I should go back just yet.”

“
You’re worried you’ll go right back to it.”

In a hot second. “Yeah. My body may be over it, but my mind isn’t. When the captain gave me that roll of money, the first thing that popped into my head was getting a bundle and some works and shooting up somewhere. The
first
thing that popped into my head. I ain’t ready to go back.”

“
I hear you.” He wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Back in Pittsburgh, you had to have a job, right?”

“
Yeah. Repairing houses mostly.”

“
Yeah? You good with your hands?”

I laugh. “I can replace a mean toilet, but only if it’s Chinese.” I spend the next ten minutes explaining that one to Slade, and he can’t stop laughing.

“
Does your job keep you from thinking about it?” Slade asks.

“
Some.” Though I was usually high or just coming down when I got to work.

“
So get a job.”

I blink. “Just … get a job.”

“
Yeah. Get a job. Today.”

I shake my head. “With no ID, no references, looking like I do with no underwear, no belt, and these?” I point at my boots. “Who’d hire me?”

Slade points at the
American Queen
. “They might.”

“
Right.”

“
You never know.” He stands and dusts some grass off his pants. “Far as they know, you’ve been working on a towboat and want a change of scenery.”

“
That’s crazy.”

“
Sometimes crazy works.” He stares me down. “Crazy worked for you when you jumped, right?”

“
But this is different.”

He shrugs. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask, now, does it? They have to have a crew of at least a hundred-fifty on there. Maybe they’ll have room for one more.”

He starts down the hill toward the
American Queen
, but I don’t move. “You’re just going to walk on and ask them?”

“
Yeah.”

I stumble down behind him. “Just like that?”

“
Well, I ain’t going up to the Captain and ask him for a job for you, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m gonna find the head Negro in charge.” He points to a chubby black man winding a rope as thick as my arm around his elbow and shoulder.

“
Him?” I say.

“
Does he look like the H-N-I-C?” Slade says. “The man’s just a hand like me, but he knows who’s running the show, right?”

“
I guess.”

He stops before we reach the gangplank. “Listen quick. You are my cousin Manny from Pittsburgh, and—”

“
They aren’t gonna believe that,” I interrupt.

“
Manny, we’re all cousins. I thought you knew that. Now you’re my cousin, okay? It’s important.”

“
Okay, okay, we’re cousins. But how’s that—”

“
Watch.”

Slade rolls up that gangplank onto the
American Queen
like he owns the boat, like he owns an entire
fleet
of boats, and he heads straight for the hand winding the rope. “How you doin’?” he asks all country-like.

“
Jes’ fine,” the man replies.

Man, his arms are huge, like he has two angry pit bulls for biceps, and his chest is about to break through his coveralls.

“
Name’s Slade, just off the
Boonesboro
.”

“
I’m Rufus.” He looks like a Rufus, only he has the youngest baby face to go with that big body.

“
I’m lookin’ for a job for my cousin Manny here,” Slade says.

Rufus looks at me. “What can he do?”

“
He’s been swabbing decks and cleaning mostly for us on the
Boonesboro
for a good while, and he wants a change of pace, you know, to get off the boat for a spell.”

“
Uh-huh,” Rufus says, stretching “uh-huh” a lot further than two syllables. Where is Rufus from?

“
Who might I talk to about this?” Slade asks.

Rufus looks back at me again. “Cleanin’, huh?”

“
Yeah.”

He turns back to Slade. “Can he bus tables or cook?”

I clear my throat. I’m over here, Rufus. “Sure. Whatever you need done.”

Rufus turns and squints at me. “Where you from?”

“
Pittsburgh.”

“
Yeah?” He loops the rope around a pole. “Got a cousin up there in Homewood, name of Greeley. You ever hear of him?”

Not unless he’s done some time at County. “Greeley? No. He got a nickname?”

Rufus pokes out his lips. “Nah. We jes’ always called him Greeley.”

“
Sorry, I don’t know him. Pittsburgh’s a big place.”

“
Don’t I know it,” Rufus says. “Got lost as I don’t know what last time we was up there. Ain’t none of the streets go straight.”

Slade puts his hand on Rufus’s shoulder, and the two of them walk along a railing away from me. Rufus looks back at me every now and then before nodding at Slade, shaking his hand, and disappearing up some stairs.

“
What’s happening?” I ask.

“
He’s gone to get the H-N-I-C.” He buttons the top button of my shirt and whisks lint from my shoulders. “You look good, Manny. You ready for your interview?”

“
Already?”

“
Yep. Country boy Rufus back there told me you got a shot at a mess job.”

“
No kidding? Do I have a good shot?”

“
Well … Maybe. He told me that you got to take a Coast Guard physical and a drug test. Oh yeah. And they’ll do a background check on you, too.”

Just when I was starting to think positively. “So why are we having the interview? You know I can’t pass my physical, much less pass a drug test or get by with the background check. They’ll find out I’m on probation and—”

“
There you go again, thinking those negative thoughts. You
can
pass that physical. Just tell them you’ve been getting over the flu. They’ll understand. Rufus tells me all they do is take your blood pressure and listen to your heart and lungs. Just keep your sleeves rolled down. Tell them you’re cold or something. As for the drug test, well, Rufus says his pee is pure as the Mississippi rain, or so he told me.”

“
What?”

“
How do you think all those professional athletes pass their drug tests?” Slade says. “Rufus got your back. Only thing they’re going to find in his pee is pork. You see the size of his ham hocks?” Then Slade sighs. “That only leaves the background check.”

“
I don’t even have any ID.”

“
Which is just as well because you’re gonna be me for a while, at least until you get to where you’re going. You play this right, and you’ll be in New Orleans in no time.”

“
New Orleans?”

“
That’s where you’re headed, right? To find your daddy?”

“
I hadn’t thought about it.” But, of course, I’m lying, and I know Slade knows I’m lying, so there’s no use in denying it. “Okay, I have thought about it, but the chance of finding him after twenty-nine years is impossible.”

“
You believe what you’re saying? Impossible? I am looking at an impossibility. A man jumps off a bridge and doesn’t die. That’s an impossibility that will never be an impossibility for me again.” He fishes in his back pocket for his wallet, taking out an Illinois driver’s license and handing it to me. “Memorize the social security number and the date of birth.”

“
This won’t work.”

He runs a finger under his social security number. “Memorize it.”

“
But where were you born? Won’t this make me from East St. Louis?”

“
So you were born in East St. Louis, and you’ve lived in Pittsburgh for most of your life. It’s easy to explain, right? You rode the
Boonesboro
up to Pittsburgh and back to here.”

He makes it sound too easy. “I don’t know.”

“
Just relax. Here comes the H-N-I-C.”

I look up a set of stairs and see Rufus leading an older black woman toward us. She wears a reddish skirt, maroon vest, long-sleeved white shirt, and a black string tie. “She’s the—”

“
Hush,” Slade says. “And smile.”

“
I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

“
Don’t smile then,” Slade whispers.

She stands in front of me. “This him?”

“
Yes, ma’am,” Rufus says, and then he goes about his business.

She looks me up and down, her soft brown eyes dancing over my clothes, her thin eyebrows rising and falling. “What can you do?”

“
Whatever you need done.” I sound so desperate. I add “ma’am” for good measure.

“
Uh-huh.” She looks up at Slade. “Rufus tells me this is your cousin. That true? You don’t look a lick alike.”

“
We’re second cousins, on my granddaddy’s side,” Slade says smoothly.

“
Uh-huh,” she says. She sighs and looks back at me. “You in this for the long haul, or will I have to take attendance?”

“
I’m not sure I understand,” I say, even though I do.

“
You gonna jump ship at the next big city?” she asks.

I look down. “No, ma’am.”

“
Uh-huh.” She shakes her head. “We could use you, don’t get me wrong. Hard to serve a full boat of four hundred folks three times a day when you’re understaffed, but I have to know you’ll be around.”

“
I’ll be around.”

“
So, are you running from or running to?” she asks.

I look up into her eyes briefly.

“
Only two kinds of folks try to get work this way, those who are running from, and those who are running to. Which one are you? Are you a from or are you a to?”

“
A little of both.”

She looks at Slade. “He always this talkative?”

“
Yep,” Slade says.

She nods. “That’s good. I like a quiet kitchen.” She smiles for the first time. “I’m Rose Neal, and you will call me ‘Yes ma’am’ and ‘No ma’am.’ I’ve been running the kitchen on this boat for twenty-two years.”

Rose doesn’t look old at all, her face all smooth, her hair dark and full.

“
There ain’t nothin’ you can pull on me that I haven’t seen try and
fail,
” she says. “
You’ll be reporting directly to me at all times of the day and night.”

Which doesn’t sound too bad. “Yes ma’am.”

“
What’s your name?”

I shoot a look at Slade. “Um, uh, Luke Slade.”

She blinks at the two of us. “Um, uh, Luke Slade? You sure?”

I shake my head. “Actually, it’s Emmanuel. Ma’am.”

“
You Hispanic?” she asks.

“
No, ma’am.”

Rose laughs softly. “You are now.”

“
Huh?”

“
It’ll make it easier for them to hire you, trust me,” Rose says. “They pride themselves on being equal-opportunity employers.”

“
Make sure you put ‘Manny’ on the application,” Slade adds.

“
Okay. I guess.” I look into Rose’s eyes. “Does this mean I’m hired?”

“
Almost. Ship’s doc will have to check you out first, and you’ll have to fill out the application. You can, um, write, can’t you?”

“
Yes ma’am.” Though I can’t remember the last time I had to write.

“
Okay then.” Rose looks around me. “Where’s your stuff?”

“
I’m, um, I’m wearing it, ma’am.”

Rose blinks, but she still smiles. “Goin’ light, huh?”

“
Yes ma’am.”

“
Good way to go,” Rose says.

“
I best be going,” Slade says. He squeezes my shoulder. “Take it easy, Manny.”

I watch him go down the gangplank. “Um, Rose, ma’am, I’d like to, um—”

“
Go ahead,” she interrupts with a chuckle.