Rich Man, Poor Man (70 page)

The Elga Andersen had sailed at dawn the next day and anybody who was looked for Tommy Jordache was going to have a hard time finding him.

The Elga Anderson was a liberty ship, ten thousand tons. It had been built in 1943 and had seen better days. It had gone from owner to owner, for quick profits, and nobody had done more to maintain it than was absolutely necessary to keep it afloat and moving. Its hull was barnacled, its engines wheezed, it hadn’t been painted in years, there was rust everywhere, the food was miserable, the captain an old religious maniac who

knelt on the bridge during storms and who had been beached during the war for Nazi sympathies. The officers had papers from ten different countries and had been dismissed from other berths for drunkenness or incompetence or theft. The men in the crew were from almost every country with a coast on the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, Greeks, Jugoslavs, Norwegians, Italians, Moroccans, Mexicans, Americans, most of them with papers that could not stand inspection. There were fights almost every day in the mess room, where a poker game was always in progress, but the officers carefully refrained from interfering. Thomas kept out of the poker game and the fights and spoke only when necessary and answered no questions and was at peace. He felt that he had found his place on the planet, ploughing the wide waters of the world. No women, no worrying about weight, no pissing blood in the morning, no scrambling for money at the end of every month. Someday, he’d pay Schultzy back the one fifty he had given him in Las Vegas. With interest.

He heard steps behind him, but didn’t turn around.

‘We’re in for a rough night,’ said the man who had joined him in the bow. ‘We’re going right into a storm.*

Thomas grunted. He recognised the voice. A young guy named Dwyer, a kid from the Middle West who somehow managed to sound like a fag. He was rabbit-toothed and was nick-named Bunny.

‘It’s the skipper,’ Dwyer went on. ‘Praying on the bridge. You know the saying - you have a minister on board, watch out for lousy weather.’ . Thomas didn’t say anything.

‘I just hope it’s not a big one,’ Dwyer said. ‘Plenty of these Liberty ships have just broken in half in heavy seas. And the way we’re loaded. Did you notice the list to port we got?’

‘No.’

‘Well, we got it. This your first voyage?’

‘Second.’

Dwyer had signed on in Savannah, where the Elga Andersen had put in after Thomas’s first return voyage on her.

‘It’s a hell hole,’ Dwyer said. I’m only on it for the opportunity.’

Thomas knew Dwyer wanted him to ask what opportunity but just stood there staring out at the darkening horizon.

‘You see,’ Dwyer went on, when he realised Thomas wasn’t going to talk, ‘I’ve got my third mate’s papers. On American

ships I might have to wait years before I move up top. But on a tub like this, with the kind of scum we got as officers, one of them’s likely to fall overboard drunk or get picked up by the police in port and then it’d be my opportunity, see?’

Thomas grunted. He had nothing against Dwyer, but he had nothing for him, either.

‘You planning to try for mate’s papers, too?’ Dwyer asked.

‘Hadn’t thought about it’ Spray was coming over the bow now as the weather worsened and he huddled into his pea jacket. Under the jacket he had a heavy turtle-neck blue sweater. The old Norwegian who had died in the Hotel Aegean must have been a big man, because his clothes fitted Thomas comfortably.

“The only thing to do,’ Dwyer said. ‘I saw that the first day I set foot on the deck of my first ship. The ordinary seaman or even the AB winds up with nothing. Lives like a dog and winds up a broken old man at fifty. Even on American ships, with the union and everything and fresh fruit. Big deal. Fresh fruit. The thing is to plan ahead. Get some braid on you. The next time I’m back I’m going up to Boston and I’m going to take a shot at second mate’s papers.’

Thomas looked at him curiously. Dwyer was wearing a gob’s white hat, pulled down all around a yellow sou’wester and solid new rubber-soled, high, working shoes. He was a small man and he looked like a boy dressed up for a costume party, with the new, natty, seagoing clothes. The wind had reddened his face but not like an outdoor man’s face, rather like a girl’s who is not used to the cold and has suddenly been exposed to it. He had long, dark eyelashes over soft, black eyes and he seemed to be begging for something. His mouth was too large and too full and too busy. He kept moving his hands in and out of his pockets restlessly.

Christ, Thomas thought, is that why he’s come up here to talk to me and he always smiles at me when he passes me? I better put the bastard straight right now. ‘If you’re such an educated hotshot,’ he said roughly, ‘with mate’s papers and all, what’re you doing down here with al of us poor folks. Why aren’t you dancing with some heiress on a cruise ship in your nice white officer’s suit?’

‘I’m hot trying to be superior, Jordache,’ Dwyer said. ‘Honest I’m not. I like to talk to somebody once in a while and you’re about my age and you’re American and you got dignity, I saw that right away, dignity. Everybody else on this ship - they’re animals. They’re always making fun of me, I’m not one of

them, I’ve got ambition. I won’t play in their crooked poker games. You must’ve noticed.’

‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ Thomas said.

‘They think I’m a fag or something,’ Dwyer said. ‘You didn’t notice that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Except for meals, Thomas stayed out of the mess room.

‘It’s my curse,’ Dwyer said. “That’s what happens when I apply for third mate anywhere. They look at my papers, my recommendations, then they talk to me for a while and look me over in that queer way and they tell me there’s no openings. Boy, I can see that look coming from a mile off. I’m no fag, I swear to God, Jordache.’

‘You don’t have to swear, anything for me,’ Thomas said. The conversation made him uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be let in on anybody’s secrets or troubles. He wanted to do his job and go from one port to another and sail the seas in solitude.

‘I’m engaged to be married, for Christ’s sake,’ Dwyer cried. He dug into the back pocket of his pants and brought forth a wallet and took out a photograph. ‘Here, look at this.’ He thrust the snapshot in front of Thomas’s nose. ‘That’s my girl and me. Last summer on Narragansett Beach? A very pretty, full bodied young girl, with curly blonde hair, in a bathing suit, and beside her, Dwyer, small but trim and well muscled like a bantamweight, in a tightly fitting pair of swimming trunks. He looked in good enough shape to go into the ring, but of course that meant nothing. ‘Does that look like a fag?’ Dwyer demanded. ‘Does that girl look as though she was the type to marry a fag?’

‘No,’ Thomas admitted.

The spray coming over the bow sprinkled the photograph. ‘You better put the picture away,’ he said. ‘The water’ll ruin it.’

Dwyer took put a handkerchief and dried the snapshot and put it back in his wallet. ‘I just wanted you to know,’ he said, ‘that if I like to talk to you from time to time it’s nothing like that.’

‘Okay,’ Thomas said. ‘Now I know it.’

‘As long as we have matters on a firm basis,’ Dwyer said, almost belligerently. ‘That’s all.’ Abruptly, he turned away and made his way along the temporary wooden cat track built over the oil drums stowed as deck cargo forward.

Thomas shook his head, feeling the sting of spray on his

face. Everybody has his troubles. A boatload of troubles. If everybody on the whole goddamn ship came up and told you what was bothering him, you’d want to jump overboard there and then.

He crouched in the bow, to escape the direct blows of spray, only occasionally lifting his head to do his job, which was to see what was ahead of the Elga Andersen on his watch.

Mate’s papers, he thought. If you were going to make your living out of the sea, why not? He’d ask Dwyer, offhandedly, later, how you went about getting them. Fag or no fag.

They were in the Mediterranean, passing Gibraltar, but the weather, if anything was worse. The captain no doubt was still praying to God and Adolf Hitler on the bridge. None of the officers had gotten drunk and fallen overboard and Dwyer still hadn’t moved up top. He and Thomas were in the old naval gun crew’s quarters at the stern, seated at the steel table riveted to the deck in the common room. The anti-aircraft guns had long been dismounted, but nobody had bothered to dismantle the crew’s quarters. There were at least ten urinals in the head. The kids of the gun crew must have pissed like mad, Thomas thought, every time they heard a plane overhead.

The sea was so rough that on every plunge the screw came out of the water and the entire stern shuddered and roared and Dwyer and Thomas had to grab for the papers and books and charts spread on the table to keep them from sliding off. But the gun crew’s quarters was the only place they could get off alone and work together. They got in at least a couple of hours a day and Thomas, who had never paid any attention at school, was surprised to see how quickly he learned from Dwyer about navigation, sextant reading, star charts, loading, all the subjects he would have to have at his fingertips when he took the examination for third mate’s papers. He was also surprised how much he enjoyed the sessions. Thinking about it in his bunk, when he was off watch, listening to the other two men in the cabin with him snore away, he felt he knew why the change had come about. It wasn’t only age. He still didn’t read anything else, not even the newspapers, not even the sporting pages. The charts, the pamphlets, the drawings of engines, the formulas, were a way out. Finally, away out.

Dwyer had worked in the engine rooms of ships, as well as on deck, and he had a rough but adequate grasp of engineering problems and Thomas’s experience around garages made it easier to understand what Dwyer was talking about.

Dwyer had grown up on the shores of Lake Superior and had sailed small boats ever since, he was a kid and as soon as he had finished high school he had hitchhiked to New York, gone down to the Battery to see the snips passing in and out of port, and had got himself signed on a coastal oil tanker as a deckhand. Nothing that had happened to him since that day had diminished his enthusiasm for the sea.

He didn’t ask any questions about Thomas’s past and Thomas didn’t volunteer any information. Out of gratitude for what Dwyer was teaching him, Thomas was almost beginning to like the little man.

‘Some day,’ Dwyer said, grabbing for a chart that was sliding forward, ‘you and I will both have our own ships. Captain Jordache, Captain Dwyer presents his compliments and asks if you will honour him and come aboard.’

‘Yeah,’ Thomas said. ‘I can just see it’

‘Especially if there’s a war,’ Dwyer said. ‘I don’t mean a great big one, like World War II, where if you could sail a rowboat across Central Park Lake, you could get to be skipper of some kind of ship. I mean even a little one like Korea. You have no idea how much money guys come home with, with combat zone pay, stuff like that. And how many guys who didn’t know their ass from starboard came out masters of their own ships. Hell, the United States has got to be fighting somewhere soon and if we’re ready, there’s no telling how high we can go.’

‘Save your dreams for the sack,’ Thomas said. ‘Let’s get back to work.’

They bent over the chart

It was in Marseilles that the idea hit Thomas. It was nearly midnight and he and Dwyer had had dinner together at a seafood place in the Vieux Port. Thomas remembered that this was the south coast of France and they had drunk three bottles of vin rose between them because they were on the south coast of France, even though Marseilles hardly could be considered a tourist resort. The Elga Andersen was due to lift anchor at 5 a.m. and as long as they got back on board before that, they were okay.

After dinner they had walked around, stopping in several bars and now they were at what was going to be their last stop, a small dark bar off the Canebiere. A juke box was playing and a few fat whores at the bar were waiting to be asked if they wanted a drink. Thomas wouldn’t have minded having a girl, but the whores were sleazy and probably had the clap and didn’t go with his idea of the kind of lady you ought to have on the south coast of France.

Drinking, a little Wearily, at a table along the wall, looking at the girls, fat legs showing under loud, imitation silk dresses, Thomas remembered the ten of the best days in his life, the time in Cannes with the wild English girl who liked jewellery.

‘Say,’ he said to Dwyer, sitting across from him, drinking beer, ‘I got an idea.’

‘What’s that?’ Dwyer was keeping a wary eye on the girls, fearful that one of them would come over and sit down next to him and put her hand on his knee. He had offered earlier in the evening to pick up a prostitute to prove, once and for all, to Thomas that he wasn’t a fag, but Thomas had said it wasn’t necessary, he didn’t care whether he was a fag or not and anyway it wouldn’t prove anything because he knew plenty of fags who also screwed.

“What’s what?’ Thomas asked.

‘You said you had an idea.’

‘An idea. Yeah. An idea. Let’s skip the fucking ship.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Dwyer said. ‘What the hell’ll we do in Marseilles without a ship? They’ll put us in jail.’

‘Nobody’ll put us in jail,’ Thomas said. ‘I didn’t say for good. Where’s the next port she puts into? Genoa. Am I right?’

‘Okay. Genoa,’ Dwyer said reluctantly.

‘We pick her up in Genoa,’ Thomas said. ‘We say we got drunk and we didn’t wake up until she was out of the harbour. Then we pick her up in Genoa. What can they do to us? Dock us a few days’ pay, that’s all. They’re shorthanded as it is. After Genoa, the ship goes straight back to Hoboken, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So we don’t lose any shore time, them keeping us on board in a port. I don’t want to sail on that lousy tub any more, anyway. We can always pick up something better in New York.’

‘But what’ll we do between now and Genoa?’ Dwyer asked worriedly.

‘We tour. We make the grand tour,’ Thomas said. ‘We get on the train and we go to Cannes. Haunt of millionaires like they say in the papers. I been there. Time of my life. We lay on the beach, we find ourselves some dames. We got our pay in our pocket___’