The Jonah Watch

Chapter 19

“We thought we’d lost that kid, boys. We were sure of it.” Or so, in later years when cooking at the Base, Lamp would aver. By then, Lamp’s huge arms were thinner. Sagging laps of flesh hung from his upper arms in that way of formerly robust women who have spent their lives among small cares, small hopes and large ambitions for others—and, of course, in company with brushes and laundry.

“Maybe you should of lost him, cook. Maybe you shoulda.” Always a young voice would say that. Always an older voice would snort with contempt, or would curse.

Mother Lamp, who cherished increasingly the wayward souls of seamen, would bustle and tsk and wait until the smartmouth had tacked his short nail of wisdom through the wide, implied fabric of the tale.

“It wasn’t that way, sonny. You’re listenin’ with your mouth.”

“He’s a red-blooded American punk, cook. Don’t pay him any mind.”

“Brace was only a kid, himself,” Lamp would say. “For awhile there he was a goner.”

In that large galley, where assistant cooks and stewards ragged and nagged apprentices with dull chores, Lamp was like the director of a small and competent theater. In the waning days of his usefulness, and with indifference to the ambitions of lesser men who contrived to gain his excellent, shore-going job, it was Lamp’s great luxury to sit garrulous on the messdeck—or, gaze silent, as if he still watched the crash of seas, like a man staring with serene indifference at memory, or at that black gulf which lies beyond all seas.

“The real miracle was,” he would say, “that wind never found us. And it was huntin’. That kid was trapped for days.” Which was, in the creative scope of Lamp’s memory, the truth; although it did not precisely match the facts.

The facts, reconstructed after Howard ran like a skein of snoopiness through memory, the log, and conversations, were largely unornamental and bland.

In sloshing water beneath the dull glow of emergency lanterns, Adrian’s boarding crew flattened and shored the sea patch aboard Aphrodite. Brace worked at the task of rigging the pump. The compartment was narrow, awash, dark. It was certainly a dungeon when Brace became pinned shoulder deep in water beneath a shifting, tangled mire of gear.

“Like Floyd Collins, boys. Stuck at the bottom of a mine.”

In those shadowed days when the world was still fabulous, before the rise of clans and explanations; before, even, the invention of hulls, the trapped Brace would have been the stuff of legends, of myth, of song. Before the race became old with knowledge, and thus voluntarily stupid, Brace would have courted and won a place among heroic tales told before dying fires. But… in fact, he was only a terribly frightened youngster who was trapped in the forward compartment of Aphrodite.

“Scared crazy,” Glass told Howard on the following day as Adrian steamed slowly toward Boston, escorting Aphrodite which still ran heeled to port. “Of drowning. Dane smacked him around some.”

“We were all scared crazy,” Howard said, and he seemed to be hearing echoes. “Brace’s name came up in conversation.”

“Snow finally got him quiet,” Glass said. “It took an hour to cut him loose.”

“It was a tough hour aboard this ship.”

The tough hour began when yeoman Howard, having seen the patch set into the heavy suction of the leak aboard Aphrodite, and having spoken honorably and well to Wilson, turned from the thinly iced main deck toward the after hatch. Above him on the boat deck the small sounds of a man working were as unconcerned and unapologetic as the movement of mice. Then the sounds stopped as the man realized that someone else was present. The pale face of bosun striker Joyce looked down, saw Howard, and Joyce released a huff of frozen breath. He steadied himself against a chain. Adrian swooped down a long swell.

“You come topside for a minute?” Joyce’s voice seemed more frozen, less mobile than his breath.

Howard walked aft, mounted the after ladder and moved across the familiar deck. He was arrested by a lifeline.

“In case the weather gets back up,” Joyce said.

“You need help?”

“I already got the fantail rigged.” Joyce pulled a wool mitten from one hand with his teeth, mumbled, used the freed hand to throw a turn and two half hitches. He looked like he was trying to warm his tongue. He mumbled, retrieved the mitten, pulled it back onto his hand. “Levere ought to know,” he said. “This whole ship’s awake. Guys are talking.” He leaned on the line, jogged it, grabbed with mittened hands to rock back and forth with all his weight to test the line. “I don’t need help,” he said apologetically. He looked at the dark sea, turned to look forward, looked upward where the masthead floated and tipped, as though the mast were a string that danced and dangled the puppet ship Adrian.

“Racca claims he’s got the gangrene,” Joyce said.

“In his head. That was a clean break.”

“I wish Dane was here. I wish Snow was.” Joyce gave a final bounce against the line. “I don’t want to be on deck with Jensen around,” he said, “and I don’t want to go below. Racca’s crazy.”

“I was scared,” Howard told him. “Then Lamp said something. This is Jensen’s crew. Jensen wouldn’t do anything to hurt this crew.”

The mast tipped forward like an ancient weapon wielded to exorcise demons. Water fountained from the bow, white flowers of foam. The stack rumbled as positive as an introit. “I never thought of that,” Joyce said. “That’s good. You can’t be scared when you think that.” He twanged the taut line, grabbed it to enjoy the vibration through the mitten. For a moment he was nearly jubilant. Then, a man struck by an awareness of situation, he became a mourner. “Everybody’s sorry about Wilson,” he said. “Everybody’s talking.”

“I’m not.” Howard, who was occasionally known to have a happy fight with French or English sailors, looked down at his clenched fists. “This time,” he said, “this time you can find out who to kill.”

“Guys say Wilson is what the sign was about.” Joyce paused, for a moment at least, in the presence of murderous intent. “Maybe Wilson made a mistake,” he murmured. “He maybe did it to himself.”

“He was a country boy,” said Howard, “but he wasn’t that much of a country boy.”

“Not me,” said Joyce. “I’m from Philadelphia.”

“Let’s get below. Get warm.”

Joyce twanged the line. He looked aft at the wake tossed and spread by the sea. He mumbled.

“You coming below?” Howard turned, walked toward the after ladder.

“Howard.”

“Yes.”

“I know what you mean about Philadelphia. But it’s home, sorta. A guy can’t help where home is.”

Ice lay in the cleats of the ladder. Thin silverings of ice lay on the taut lifelines stretched across the fantail. Howard went through the after hatch, crossed the fiddley and looked down to see McClean standing on the plates. Fallon stood at the board. His keglike shape was grouped into itself, like a caged bear held by invisible bars. Fallon looked up, saw Howard, motioned with a thick hand. McClean saw Fallon’s motion, looked up into the darkness of the fiddley. McClean stood in the bright lights of the engine room like a tired man pinned to a landscape by intense sunlight. His nearly tan face was sweaty from engine heat and seemed radiant with light and sweat.

Howard fumbled down the always almost-slick ladder. He arrived on the plates.

“Lamp did a number on Masters,” Fallon said. “You were there.”

“He had it coming.” Howard was surprised. “Guys on the messdeck heard it?”

“A mouse can’t poot aboard this ship without.” McClean stood easily on the plates, and his weight moved with the forward-running, wave-smacking motion of Adrian. “Masters ain’t going to ‘fess getting licked by a cook.”

“Last thing Lamp ever licked was a spoon.”

“You weren’t there,” Howard told Fallon. “Lamp swabbed the deck with that guy.”

Fallon looked like he was trying to spell a tough word. “Maybe the kid. When Amon left, Lamp adopted the kid, sort of.” Fallon looked at the board, reached to make a minor adjustment on a valve. His arm was thick, tattooed with a clumsy, unsinuous picture of a woman. Beneath that tattoo was another, the traditional fouled anchor.

“He was taking care of the ship,” Howard said. “Guys were afraid.”

“Guys are afraid.”

“Lamp said something.” Howard explained. ”… Jensen… his crew, after all… wouldn’t do anything to hurt this crew.”

“Now there’s a relief,” McClean said. “That there is a bonified relief.”

“Tell the guys up forward,” said Fallon. “When you think like that, you can’t get scared.”

“Lamp says it’s a sign.”

“I never paid much attention to that cook. Y’know, that’s a pretty good cook.”

Howard climbed from the engine room, stood on the grates and looked down into the brilliantly lighted space. The whooshing updraft of hot air and the rumble of the engines blanked the wash of the sea. McClean and Fallon stood unmasked as themselves. There was no illusion, no suggestion of Jensen on those plates. One sign seemed clear. Jensen did not want Brace in the engine room. Jensen seemed to be a jealous lesser spirit in the land of a jealous god.

Forward and to port was the crew’s compartment. Howard slowly descended the ladder. A man sat against the lower step of the ladder. He appeared as a dark bulk beneath the red glow of dull nightlights. The ancient hull of Adrian creaked, rattled; the old steel still firm along the welds but growing infirm across featureless steel plates stretched between points of stress. Water that had been carried to the deck on boots lay in a thin, red sheen. The red lights toned the edges of shadow, and it intensified the darkness of shaded bunks and corners. The crew’s compartment was not musty, as it would have been if men were sleeping. The smell, if it was a smell, telegraphed anxiety, and a sense of pending combat.

The man who sat against the bottom step was hunched over, dark, stolid, and he did not turn as Howard descended the ladder. A few feet forward, and starboard in the compartment, the redhead Rodgers sat beneath a red light. He wedged between a bulkhead and a locker. Rodgers whistled thinly, and he seemed pleased with his innovation. He looked forward and to port, where midships in the compartment lay the dark form of Racca stretched on a bunk. Beside the bunk, and directly beneath a light, Masters stood like a Samaritan elf about to spread ointment or unction. Bosun striker Joyce, having preceded Howard, sat on a bottom bunk and watched the whistling Rodgers. Joyce’s wet mittens lay in two small piles beside him, dark and steaming as venial sins. Joyce held a swab in one hand, and he pushed it back and forth across the area of deck he could reach without standing. Adrian pitched, rose to a high swell.

Howard squeezed against a rail to pass the sitting man. It was Wysczknowski, and Wysczknowski looked at Howard, his tight-lipped Polack face a warning against abrupt movement.

“Is it about anything,” Wysczknowski said, “or are you another one asking for a rap in the chops?”

Elfin Masters looked up, saw Howard, reached to tap the woozy Racca on his foot. Racca, like a man rehearsed, moaned, gave a small yelp, a creak like worn steel plates. Racca’s uninjured arm flopped. His hand rose and groped in the space between two bunks. The hand floated pale and redly washed. Racca looked like he offered a blessing.

Howard took a chance. “Are you all nuts?” he said to Wysczknowski.

“Them two,” Wysczknowski said and pointed at Masters and Racca. “I ain’t sure about them others.”

“I keep trying to tell you something,” Joyce said. “You guys won’t listen.”

Rodgers whistled a slow march tune, learned, no doubt, at his high school graduation. He fumbled at his shirtfront, a man confusedly caught without a crucifix. Racca moaned, raised his uninjured arm. He pointed forward. His arm trembled, shook, pounded the air. It was galvanic, like Amon’s seizure.

Masters looked elfishly at Howard and Wysczknowski. In the red lights his twisted face was leering. He was a man showing off. He was showing what he could do.

“Lamp whipped him for being yellow,” Howard said. “He figures Lamp won’t do it if he’s crazy.”

“He’s crazy.” Wysczknowski sat unmoving, but prepared. “We got enough trouble. Levere has got enough trouble.”

Howard, who had not heard about the trapped Brace, listened while Wysczknowski explained.

“Dane is there.”

“And Snow. They say we’re going to Boston.”

Masters leered. He passed a hand in front of Racca’s face. He hissed.

“Brace,” Racca moaned. Then in clear and somber tones he pontificated. His voice sounded like he was a senator praising soybeans.

“Brace is off the ship,” Racca proclaimed. “Brace must stay off the ship.”

Masters raised his elfin face into the red light like a satanic worshipper engaged in foul prayer.

“Brace,” he hissed. “Jensen.”

Racca pointed.

“There they are,” said Racca, in the wise and pontifical tones. “Brace and Jensen have returned to the ship. Please do not hurt us, Brace. Please do not hurt us, Jensen.”

His pontifical tone faded, he whimpered, choked like a man dying. “Don’t touch me—oh there… there… there… they are!”

“There—there—there—they—are!” Masters twirled slowly in the red light, the light chasing after the crevices and lines of Masters’s face. He did an eternally slow pirouette. He stopped and faced forward.

“I don’t want to go with you,” he said. His voice rose in a low shriek. “Leading me, he’s leading me, he’s come for me….” Masters blubbered, wept, recoiled against Racca’s bunk. He held to the frame of the bunk. His body was pulled, snatched, pressed backward as if invisible hands were dragging him. His elf face seemed to pull upward into his forehead, the diamond-shaped chin was lost in shadow as he ducked his head. Slobber fell like a sprinkle of blood onto the red, wet deck. Then Masters dived to the deck as if he chased his own blood. He lay flat, and his eyes were wide and unseeing. His slightly bowed arms shook, began to knock toward each other, and he fell forward again and started to writhe and flop as if jolted with electricity. His hands clawed at the deck. Then his body was thrust sharply upward, sideways, flopped back. Masters looked like he was being kicked by invisible feet.

“They’ve come,” moaned Racca.

“Don’t—oh—don’t—don’t—hurt.” Masters’s body was thrown in the other direction. It was nearly impossible to believe that he was not being kicked.

“Is he puttin’ on?”

“I don’t know.” Howard’s voice was awed.

Masters scrabbled about the deck like a crab. Masters vomited bile. Masters’s corpselike eyes stared, stared.

Rodgers stood and went to sit in quick companionship beside Joyce. Joyce looked up, jumped, looked forward where the figure of a man slowly rolled out of a bunk. Howard followed Joyce’s frightened stare with a frightened stare of his own. He waited for the worst.

The figure was leaned over the bunk, feeling beneath the pad. Hands appeared and the hands were holding a pack of smokes. The figure lit a cigarette, then turned toward the light. Gunner Majors shook himself like a dog shaking down its fur.

“You punks won’t let a man sleep,” he mourned. “You just keep at it and keep at it. Don’t I have enough trouble with wet guns?” He dragged at the cigarette, stepped to the forward bulkhead for a CO₂ extinguisher. Masters flopped and slathered and gurgled. He began to make crablike movements toward the ladder. Wysczknowski stood.

Majors flipped the cigarette to the deck, towards Masters’s legs.

“We got a fire,” Majors said. “You see it there.” He spoke in calm tones of disgust. He pointed at the cigarette. Then he stripped the seal of the extinguisher and pulled the pin. He pointed the extinguisher at the deck. Gas exploded with a roar. It boiled, foamed, expanded; even the sea crashing against the hull was cloaked and silenced by the roar. The gas coiled from the deck no more than six feet from Masters’s crotch. Frost formed on Masters’s boots. Oxygen disappeared. Men put their arms over their faces, sucked hard to breathe.

Majors stopped. He waited for the cold ice mist to dissipate. He viewed his handiwork.

Masters sat up. He held his hands over cold testicles.

“There’s just one word for you, Majors,” said Masters. “You’re a bastard.” The elf face was contorted with indignation.

“Bastard,” echoed Racca. “Bastard—bastard—bastard—come to save us—”

Majors squeezed the trigger of the fire extinguisher. A burst of gas choked its way toward Masters. Masters flipped over on his face. Then he scrambled to his feet.

“Bastard,” Racca moaned. “Oh, save us, bastard, save us.”

“Shut up,” Masters told Racca. “Before I bust your other arm.” He stood beneath the red lights, and, like McClean and Fallon who had stood on the plates, Masters was unmasked. He was only himself, trembling, perhaps doing his best to control compulsions of fear or guilt.

“If I don’t get some sleep, I’m gonna die.” Majors checked the pressure gauge on the extinguisher, thinking, perhaps, that he would have to alibi to get it recharged.

“Climb into your sack,” Majors told Masters, “or do I get the handcuffs?”

“He was acting.” Wysczknowski shook his head in pure wonderment. “It was an act.”

“We’ll know when we get to Boston.” Howard turned to Majors. “He really under arrest?”

“I’m master at arms, and I need sleep—so, yeah, he’s under arrest.” He turned back to Masters. “Get out of that sack for any reason, any, and you get locked in with the hawser.”

“You want me to log it?”

“I’ll be up there in a minute,” Majors said. He turned back to Masters. “If we got us a Jonah, boy, then I know who.”

When Howard arrived on the bridge, radioman James leaned against the set like a wisp of paleness and fatigue. His frailty, no matter his protests, would always sooner or later hunt him to ground.

“I’ll take it for awhile,” said Howard. “I’ll call you for important traffic.”

“The generator burned on Able,” James told him. “That’s the only thing we’ve heard that’s new.”

“It’s history. Lay below.”

“I’m okay.”

“Nobody said you weren’t. Lamp said there was going to be fresh coffee.”

“Just the trick. That’s just the trick.” James read the routine for turning over the watch. He looked out at the flaring lights of Aphrodite.

“If we don’t get wind.”

“Dane’s there.”

“Fresh coffee. Just the trick.” James disappeared down the ladder like a puff of mist.

Howard checked the radar screen, flicked between ranges, adjusted the set. If a storm was batting around, it was still not on the screen.

The radio blanked as a transmitter opened nearby. The sillysounding voice of a man hollered: “How soon? When? Hurry up. How soon?”

“The guy who owns the boat,” said Chappel. “He keeps doing that. Wants to be taken off.”

“Remind him of procedure,” said Levere. “This time tell him we have the power of arrest.”

“I didn’t know that, Cap.”

“We don’t,” said Levere. “When we get done with this, you must read up on the law.”

The radio blanked, as the transmitter again opened aboard Aphrodite. “Get outta the way,” said Glass, “or you get a knuckle sandwich.” Glass’s voice was tense, either with situation or with the intent to back up a promise. “Cap,” said Glass, “we got him loose and he ain’t hurt.”

Levere sat immobile. Silent and silhouetted like a man finishing a prayer. “Tell Glass to follow procedure,” he said. “I want to speak to Aphrodite’s master.” He slouched in the captain’s chair, and his fatigue, which never showed, now seemed to be pressing him toward the deck. He waited until the radio spoke with the voice of his friend.

“Can you steam, Tom?”

“We can. Slowly.”

“I’ll leave two men aboard you,” said Levere. “Let’s head for the barn.”

Dane stayed aboard Aphrodite, and Dane kept Brace with him. Aphrodite and Adrian went to Boston, at three knots, where upon arriving, Aphrodite’s owner fired Aphrodite’s captain and attempted to pick up his master’s papers with a charge of incompetency. A carbon of a complaint arrived for Levere. It charged Levere with hazarding life at sea, and it charged Adrian’s crew with the theft of a piece of canvas; and, yeoman Howard, with a hard-mouthed determination to track down injustice, discovered that history is rigged so that you can never find out who to kill.