The Sea is My Brother (20 page)

Wesley sipped his coffee silently.

“Everybody,” sang Glory in his thunderous basso, “want to go to heaven . . . but no-one want to die!”

“What was her name?” Wesley asked.

Glory pushed a pan of bacon into the range oven and kicked it shut.

“Louise!” he moaned. “Louise . . . the sweetest gal I ever know.” He began to sing as he broke eggs into a pot for scramble: “Lawise, Lawise, is the sweetest gal I know, hmmm, she made me walk from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico . . . now looka here Lawise, what you tryin' to do? Hmmm? What you tryin' to do, you tryin' to give the man mah lovin'—an' me too—now, you know Lawise, baby that will never do . . . now, you know you can't love me . . . an' love some other man too . . . hmmm . . .”

His voice broke off in sinking tremolo.

“Way down blues, man,” said Wesley.

“Richmond blues!” boomed Glory. “I used to sing ‘Louise' all day in front o' the pool hall . . . an' den at night I done drag my feet over to Louise's. Man, you ever see Virginia in the Spring, hmmm?”

“You Goddamned right I did,” said Wesley.

“Ever take yo woman out thar with a bottle o' gin, them willow trees, them nights out thar with a big fat moon jus' lookin' down, hmmm?”

“You Goddamned right I did!”

“Man, you know all 'bout it! Do I have to tell ya?” boomed Glory.

“No sir!”

“Hoo hoo hoo!” howled Glory. “I'm headin' back for Richmond soon's I drag my pants off dis ship . . . yassuh! I'm goin' on down agin!”

“I'll go with you, man! We'll spend three weeks with a couple o' them Richmond mommas!”

“Yeah!” thundered Glory. “I'm gonna get me mah honey Lawise an' you amble on down de street an' get you sump tin'.”

“High yaller!” cried Wesley, slapping Glory on the back. “You an' me's goin' to have three weeks o' Richmond beach . . .”

“Hoo!” cried Glory. “Throw me dat Jelly Roll, boy, an' I'm gonna eat it right up!”

They hooted with laughter as the ship pushed on, the sun now peered into the galley port with a flaming orange face; the sea had become a great flashing blue gem specked with beads of foam.

CHAPTER EIGHT

That afternoon, while Everhart sat sunning near the poop deck rail, reading Coleridge's “Ancient Mariner,” he was startled by the harsh ringing of a bell behind him.

He looked up from the book and glanced around the horizon with fear. What was it?

A droning, nasal voice spoke over the ship's address system: “All hands to the boat deck. All hands to the boat deck.” The system whistled deafeningly.

Bill grinned and looked around, fear surging in his breast. The other seamen, who had been lounging on the deck with him, now dashed off. The warm wind blew Bill's pages shut; he rose to his feet with a frown and laid down the book on his folding chair. This calm, sunny afternoon at sea, flashing greens and golds, whipping bracing breezes across lazy decks, was this an afternoon for death? Was there a submarine prowling in these beautiful waters?

Bill shrugged and ran down to his focastle for the lifebelt; running down the alleyway, he hastily strapped it on, and clambered up the first ladder. An ominous silence had fallen over the ship.

“What the hell 's going on!” he muttered as he climbed topsides. “This is no time for subs! We've just started!” His legs wobbled on the ladder rungs.

On the top deck, groups of quiet seamen stood beside their lifeboats, a grotesque assemblage in lifebelts, dungarees, cook's caps, aprons, oiler's caps, bow caps, khaki pants, and dozens of other motley combinations of dress. Bill hastened toward his own lifeboat and halted beside a group. No one spoke. The wind howled in the smoking funnel, flapped along the deck waving the clothing of the seamen, and rushed out over the stern along the bright green wake of the ship. The ocean sighed a soothing, sleepy hush, a sound that pervaded everywhere in suffusing enormity as the ship slithered on through, rocking gently forward.

Bill adjusted his spectacles and waited.

“Just a drill, I think,” offered a seaman.

One of the Puerto Rican seamen in Bill's group, who wore a flaring cook's cap and a white apron beneath his lifebelt, began to conga across the deck while a comrade beat a conga rhythm on his thighs. They laughed.

The bell rang again; the voice returned: “Drill dismissed. Drill dismissed.”

The seamen broke from groups into a confused swarm waiting to file down the ladders. Bill took off his lifebelt and dragged it behind him as he sauntered forward. Now he had seen everything . . . the ship, the sea . . . mornings, noons, and nights of sea . . . the crew, the destroyer ahead, a boat drill, everything.

He felt suddenly bored. What would he do for the next three months?

Bill went down to the engine room that night to talk with Nick Meade. He descended a steep flight of iron steps and stopped in his tracks at the sight of the monster source of the
Westminster
's power . . . great pistons charged violently, pistons so huge one could hardly expect them to move with such frightening rapidity. The
Westminster
's shaft turned enormously, leading its revolving body toward the stern through what seemed to Bill a giant cave for a giant rolling serpent.

Bill stood transfixed before this monstrous power; he began to feel annoyed. What were ideas in the face of these brutal pistons; pounding up and down with a force compounded of nature and intriguing with nature against the gentle form of man?

Bill descended further, feeling as though he were going down to the bottom of the sea itself. What chance could a man have down here if a torpedo should ram at the waterline, when the engine room deck was at a level thirty or forty feet below! Torpedo . . . another brutal concoction of man, by George! He tried to imagine a torpedo slamming into the engine room against the hysterical, blind power of the pistons, the deafening shock of the explosion, the hiss of escaping steam, the billions of water pouring in from a sea of endless water, himself lost in this holocaust and being pitched about like a leaf in a whirlpool. Death! . . . he half expected it to happen that precise moment.

A water tender stood checking a gauge.

“Where's the oiler Meade?” shouted Bill above the roar of the great engine. The water tender pointed forward. Bill walked until he came to a table where Nick sat brooding over a book in the light of a green shaded lamp.

Nick waved his hand; he had apparently long given up conversation in an engine room, for he pushed a book toward Bill. Bill propped himself up on the table and ran through the leaves.

“Words, words, words,” he droned, but the din of the engine drowned out his words and Nick went on reading.

The next day—another sun drowned day—the
Westminster
steamed North off the coast of Nova Scotia, about
forty miles offshore, so that the crew could see the dim purple coastline just before dusk.

A fantastic sunset began to develop . . . long sashes of lavender drew themselves above the sun and reached thin shapes above distant Nova Scotia. Wesley strolled aft, digesting his supper, and was surprised to see a large congregation of seamen on the poop deck. He advanced curiously.

A man stood before the winch facing them all and speaking with gestures; on the top of the winch, he had placed a bible, and he now referred to it in a pause. Wesley recognized him as the ship's baker.

“And they were helped against them, and the Hagarites were delivered into their hand, and all that were with them,” the baker shouted, “for they cried to God in the battle and he was entreated of them because they put their trust in him . . .”

Wesley glanced around at the assemblage. The seamen seemed reluctant to listen, but none of them made any motion to leave. Some watched the sunset, others the water, others gazed down—but all were listening. Everhart stood at the back listening curiously.

“And so, brothers,” resumed the baker, who had obviously appointed himself the
Westminster
's spiritual guide for the trip, “we must draw a lesson from the faith of the
Reubenites in their war with the Hagarites and in our turn call to God's aid in our danger. The Lord watched over them and he will watch over us if we pray to him and entreat his mercy in this dangerous ocean where the enemy waits to sink our ship . . .”

Wesley buttoned up his peacoat; it was decidedly chilly. Behind the baker's form, the sunset pitched alternately over and below the deck rail, a florid spectacle in pink. The sea was deep blue.

“Let us kneel and pray,” shouted the baker, picking up his bible, his words drowned in a sudden gust of sea wind so that only those nearby heard him. They knelt with him. Slowly, the other seamen dropped to their knees. Wesley stood in the midst of the bowed shapes.

“Oh God,” prayed the baker in a tremulous wail, “watch over and keep us in our journey, oh Lord, see that we arrive safely and . . .”

Wesley shuffled off and heard no more. He went to the bow and faced the strong headwind blowing in from the North, its cold tang biting into his face and fluttering back his scarf like a pennant.

North, in the wake of the destroyer, the sea stretched a seething field which grew darker as it merged with the lowering sky. The destroyer prowled.

Copyright © 2011 by John Sampas, The Estate of Stella Kerouac Introduction © 2011 by Dawn Ward

 

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Typeset in 12 point Dante by Cynthia Young at Sagecraft.

 

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First Da Capo Press edition 2012

eISBN : 978-0-306-82128-8

 

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