by James Jones
“Well, I think I’ll go back down,” Lucky said, after a little while.
“Me too,” Irma said.
“Me too,” Ben said.
Grant went down with Lucky and, in the cabin, kissed her. “It’s all right.” he said.— “I shouldn’t have said that first thing I said,” she said right away. “I really shouldn’t have. Not where he could hear it. But I don’t like him. He really bothers me. He scares me. He really is accident-prone. And he doesn’t like me.”— “He’s not accident-prone in sailing and diving,” Grant said. “He’s a great sailor. But I guess you were right in saying that about his ‘personal life’ that time.” Lucky looked at him quickly and he nodded, but put his finger to his lips and motioned he would tell her later. Then he went back up on deck.
Dawn began coming up very soon after, and with the dawn everything and everybody freshened up immediately. The sight of daylight, and then of the sun itself, washed away all of the fatigue Grant had accumulated during an almost sleepless night. It affected Bonham, who had not slept at all, the same way. The wind which had turned to the northeast during the night stayed in the northeast and as the day warmed up began to freshen until it actually became, gradually, the true trade wind. Bonham relinquished the wheel to Orloffski, giving him the course, and went below to the galley and fried up huge plastic platters of bacon and eggs for everybody which made doubly enjoyable the coming of day. The Surgeon and his girlfriend came back aft to eat laughing happily and looking none the worse for wear, after spreading out their air mattress the Surgeon had thought so wisely to bring along, putting it out on the coachroof in the sun. The morning was very pleasant in the bright sun and the freshening wind. Lucky and Irma sunned themselves in their swimsuits up forward in the bow, where last night’s ‘orgy’ (as they two now referred to it between themselves) had taken place. Bonham put out two trolling lines from the stern, and they hauled in two good-sized bonito when they apparently passed through a school of them, which they threw back, since bonito was too bloody a fish to really be good eating. Bonham cooked them lunch at noon, and while it was only fried Spam and German-fried potatoes, it was better than the cold tunafish and cold Spam of last night. Then at two P.M. the Nelsons hove into view dead ahead on the horizon as Bonham had promised they would, and by two-thirty they were sailing slowly under shortened sail past North Nelson and Georgetown the tiny capital, where they could see a trim handsome-looking yacht docked at the little wharf.
“But aren’t we going to put in there?” Lucky asked,
“Yes,” Irma said. “I thought— . . .”
“We will later,” said Bonham, who had taken over the wheel again after they sighted the land. “Maybe tomorrow. It’s too late now. What the hell, they charge you thirty-five bucks a day docking charges there if you stay overnight. I thought we’d go on to another island I know, a little one. It’s got good reef and we can dive there this afternoon, catch our supper, and anchor off the island for the night.”
This was what they did, and it was fine for the rest of the daytime. Bonham anchored the Naiad in close to the lee shore, and everybody put on aqualungs and went spearfishing. This was strictly a lung-diving cruise, and since Ben had never used a lung, Bonham spent the afternoon with him in shallow water patiently checking him out in the lung until he was satisfied Ben could use it safely. The others fished. Except of course for Lucky, who snorkeled a little, Irma who of course couldn’t swim, and the Surgeon’s girlfriend who it turned out was an excellent lung-diver but who didn’t feel like it today. Lobster—langouste really, since they were crayfish and had no claws—were plentiful everywhere, and by evening they had more than enough fish and lobster tails to fill everybody up, as Bonham had planned. These lobster tails (although Bonham fried them that night) were immediately dubbed “piss-marinated lobster” by Lucky and the equally irreverent Irma. This was because the men—only Orloffski, Grant and the Surgeon this particular afternoon—rather than swim all the way back to the ship with it every time they took one, simply pulled off the heads and bodies and threw them away, and deposited the tails in the crotches of their swimtrunks or bikinis and carried them there until the suits would hold no more.— “Can you imagine eating a lobster tail that that Orloffski’s been peeing through for an hour or so?” Lucky demanded of Irma and Grant, fortunately out of hearing of that Polish gentleman. In spite of that, the lobster tails made great eating when Bonham fried them in his cornmeal batter. And the lobster-fishing was great sport, peering in under the rocks and corals for them, fish were plentiful also, and at one point—looking for a lobster—Grant killed a five-foot moray eel, his first, which he boated. Although Bonham maintained that the moray made excellent eating, the ugly, slimy, vicious-looking creature was finally thrown overboard by the combined vote of everybody except the crew, which meant Bonham and Orloffski. Yes, the daytime was fine. The sun was bright, the sea was beautiful, the breeze fresh and lovely. It was only when night came that it wasn’t fine. Then it was the same old thing. The accommodations.
Since this was a lung-diving cruise, most of the entire deck space was crammed with single tanks, sets of double tanks, regulators, all sorts of gear, and Bonham had naturally brought along his portable Cornelius air compressor and this took up a good deal of space all by itself. The Surgeon and his girl had staked out their claim first to the only available space in the bow, and nobody felt like asking them to trade off, so it was either sleep below or sit cramped up in or beside the cockpit, which anyway had by now somehow become the province of Bonham and Cathie, whose bunk had not yet once been made up for her in the saloon, and whose blankets Bonham brought up for her in the cockpit.
This was all really Bonham’s fault, too, Grant was well aware. Like not having finished the accommodations. He had just brought along too many paying customers. He should either—with all the diving gear he was carrying—have left the Surgeon and his girl at home, or else not have asked Ben and Irma along. He had just been greedy, because of having no ready money, as Lucky had commented (and Grant had noted) before. Grant had told her all this during the afternoon, as well as all about his private conversation with Bonham about Cathie Finer the night before. “Some outfit,” Lucky said with an I-told-you-so air. “Some cruise it’s turning out to be!”
And in the morning Lucky (who probably would not have done it had she not been backed up by Irma, and even Ben) rebelled. She would not spend one more damned miserable night on that damned boat.— “Hell, I can’t even sleep with you, with my own husband,” she said to Grant privately before. “I just won’t. And neither will Irm.” So they took it to the captain.
“Why can’t we put into Georgetown and dock there at night? There’s a hotel there, and those of us who want to can rent ourselves a room, and have at least a little comfort. I swear I simply can’t sleep down in this hole anymore. And we can eat dinner there. We’re all fed up with fish. And then there’s that other place you told us about, that Dog Cay? That ritzy place? Aren’t we going to go there?” She made an ardent, and excellent spokesman.
“Yes, we can go there,” Bonham said slowly, very slowly. It was plain he was angry, and when he was angry he got slower and slower. “But there aint any sleeping accommodations there for us. Only free dockage. It’s all private houses there. And only the free dockage for only a night or two. Longer would be abusin their hospitality.”
“Then why can’t we dock every night at Georgetown, and just go out from there every day in the boat?”
“Well, for one thing,” Bonham said, “I didn’t plan on paying thirty-five or fifty bucks dockage charges every night when I calculated the cost of this trip. And I certainly didn’t count on buying any dinners ashore.”
“I’ll take care of the dinners,” Grant put in. “Don’t worry about that”
“Another thing is,” Bonham said stubbornly, “is that we can’t get to all the places I’ve got it planned for us to visit and dive on, if we have to travel twenty miles to thirty-five miles to get ther
e and twenty to thirty-five miles to get back. That’s sixty to seventy miles’ sailing. Would take us all day just to get there and back.”
Now Irma spoke up. “Then why don’t we just dive and explore around here? And down at that Dog Cay? Couldn’t we sleep out on their dock?”
“It wouldn’t look very high-class,” Bonham said. “They’re British.”
“To hell with high-class,” Irma said. “A dock’s better than down in this boat. And Christ, it’s no damn difference to me where we go. Here or there. I can’t even swim. You were going to teach me to swim.”
“And I will,” Bonham said. He was looking more and more harassed. “I was planning to start with you today for an hour, now Ben can use the lung. But— . . .” It tapered off.
“I just can’t spend another night on this boat,” Lucky said.
“Ship! Ship, damn it!” Bonham said, his voice rising. “This is not a damned boat!” Then he brought it back down to slow again. “I just didn’t plan that kind of a trip when I quoted you people the daily charges—”
“You never quoted me any daily charges,” Ben said.
Bonham went right on. “All these extras will be comin out of my expenses. I won’t make a nickel on the trip. Do you want to pay those dockage charges?”
“What the hell? No,” Ben said, with some asperity. “You got that other ten thousand dollars coming from Sam Finer, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” Bonham said. He sighed. “Anyway, I haven’t seen any of it yet. God, what a bunch of lubbers you are!” he exploded suddenly.
But in the end he gave in. And it was Cathie Finer who caused it. Cathie had been standing and listening—with that new soured, bitter face of hers, so different from the happy face she’d had in Grand Bank that Grant remembered, when she’d been happy with Sam. And now she stood and listened and said nothing, and then she gave her vote in favor. With a rather special look at Bonham, and a particular smile, she said she too would much rather spend the nights ashore, and Bonham looked at her once and acceded. He got the point. So did Grant; and so did Lucky, from her face. So did just about everybody. But Cathie Finer didn’t seem to care. And so it was that at the end of the day’s diving they quit early and hoisted sail for Georgetown. And that was how they met the Texans.
The Texans were incredible. There were three well-larded couples of them—at least the men were well-larded; the women were lean and stringy-dieted-thin, and they it soon turned out were the actual men in the whole group. It was their trim handsome yacht they had seen from the Naiad when they first passed by Georgetown, and when Naiad pulled in and docked at the wooden and not-at-all-brand-new wharf right behind her, her beautifully white-painted hull and well-painted, well-varnished spick-and-span abovedecks made the Naiad look like some creaky old derelict bum that had just managed to pull into port. She, the Lady Suzanne, out of Houston (Suzanne being the name of the wife of the owner, who immediately introduced herself as such), was a 98-foot-overall two-masted schooner and in addition to the three rich Texas couples carried four in crew, and she made the Naiad look like plain shit, as Lucky said. This was especially evident when they saw her beautiful, spacious, well-cared-for accommodations belowdecks, as they immediately did—were shown— when they were all invited over for drinks, which they immediately were.
It was this, that immediate and quite early invitation over for drinks, that started off the catastrophic chain of events that went on and on—getting more and more horribly nightmarish—on and on into the night. “Yawl lak bubbon, honey?” Grant heard one of the ladies say to Lucky as soon as they were aboard.— “Well, no,” Lucky answered. “I’m really a scotch drinker, but—”—“Thas awwwl rat, honey! We got scotch. We got bubbon, scotch, gium, ruum. Honey, we got anything. We got it awl!” And they did. And they put it away too.— “Then I’ll have a scotch,” Lucky had said; “scotch and soda.”— “Ferd!” the lady Suzanne screeched her command. “Lady’ll haave a scotch!” Her husband turned immediately from whatever he was doing and saying to Bonham and Grant and went to fulfill the command. Ferd, the Lady Suzanne’s obviously rich owner, with his well-larded paunch, was the total slave of his thin wife, and so apparently were the male members of the other two couples. This was all right, but as the evening wore on it got worse, rougher, much much rougher. “Weall bubbon driinkers,” Suzanne continued to Lucky, “bean suthren. Bubbon and braanchwater, y’know. Ha, ha. Thas aways the way to teull a Suthrener f’om a Nothrener.” This part would get worse too as the night—the unbelievable night—wore on.
It started off nicely enough. Conversation. More drinks. More and more drinks. It was pleasant in the cooling sea air as the dusk came on. “This is a lovely ship you have,” Grant had said sincerely, very sincerely, considering, to Suzanne. “Yaas, it’s a nas ol’ boat,” Suzanne smiled. “We got a betteh boat back haome in Hewston. It’s much begger. But it’s a motoh one, y’know. A motoh yacht. So we neveh breng it down thiis fa’. We call thiis one ouur maarlynn-fiishin boat.” Had they been down to the famous Dog Cay with it yet? Yaas, they haad. But they didn’t much like those Anglish. They were much more parashul to the Greens, here. She said it ‘Greeyans’. They loved the Greens.
Now the Greens, as Bonham had explained to all his group some time back, were a Bahamian Negro family who had somehow got themselves transplanted down here into the Nelsons. And except for two or three closed-down houses owned by Miami marlin-fishermen, and one big luxury hotel that was just in the process of being built by Florida speculators, the Greens owned practically all of North Nelson including the town itself, which was tiny and was inhabited mainly by other Greens who were brothers, sons, cousins, or nephews. They owned the wharf, and they owned the one functioning hotel, and they owned the one and only restaurant. Certain of them also maintained a sort of homemade-guitar and steel-drum calypso band which would play on the dock for a certain fixed fee. And the Lady Suzanne party was partial to these Greens. “They’uh awful smaart niggas,” Suzanne smiled. “And they jest lo-ove us.”
And apparently—unbelievably, incredibly—they did. “‘Course Ferd aways tiips them good. An’ he paays the steeel ban’ double wheneveh they play,” Suzanne smiled. “’Couse they won’ haave a reaal codlock on thiis plaace, anymoare, when the new hotel opens uup in a month or so. It’s too baad. It’s a reaal shaame for uus.”
One of Ferd’s guests (called Bert), hearing the calypso band being mentioned, said, “The ban’? The steel ban’? Sho!” and strode to the ship’s rail and shoved his own larded paunch (though not as larded, and not as paunchy, as Ferd’s) against the lifeline. “Hey, boa!” he called at a small Negro boy who was sitting against one of the jetty buildings back on the shore with his knees drawn up, watching the ‘party’ with large white eyes. “Hey, boa! Hey, nigga!” Bert didn’t even say ‘nigger.’ “Heah’s a quarter!” He flipped it ashore. “Run up an’ tell that nigga steel ban’ get theah black ass down heah play some music.”
The boy ran off.
“You call them all nigger like that?” Grant asked him curiously.
“What? Sho! Why not? They ahr niggas, ain’t they?”
“Don’t they mind it?”
“Why should a nigga min’ bein called a nigga?” Bert wanted to know.
That set the tone. Pretty soon a straggling group of Greens straggled out onto the dock dragging their straggly looking instruments and began to play some very bad calypso music. —“Hey!” Bert called. “You niggas come awn up hea closeh. We ca-yunt even hea you with the noise f’om this hea damned party.” The group of Greens straggled in closer and straggled off some more bad calypso. “Thas enuf,” Harry, who was the other guest, said finally, “Ca-yunt heah yo’self think! Ferd?” Ferd distributed largesse happily amongst the band, and they straggled off smiling just as happily.
Grant could hardly believe it.— “They rially do just lo-ve us!” Suzanne said from beside him on the hatch, and then put her hand kindly on his knee. “Don’t you jest lak uus a lil too?” s
he added.— “Hey!” Grant grinned. “Cut that out! My old lady’ll beat me up!”— “I jest bet she would,” Suzanne purred.— “And what about your old man?” Grant asked. “Oah, they’ull awl be deaad drunk and aslee-up ’for very long,” Suzanne smiled, and then gave him an openly suggestive look.
It was quite true that everybody was swiftly getting drunk. Grant was himself. For quite a few days now, since René’s farewell dinner, and even before, he had been drinking fairly heavily all through the day, and even more heavily in the night, and after that night—that first night out—when he had stood in the open saloon hatchway looking at the stars and had decided, had become convinced, that Lucky actually had done it with Jim Grointon, had actually fucked him, that crazy night, since then he had been drinking even more heavily, daily and nightly, and why not? Most of the time—sailing or diving—he had not had to think about that, but now he did think about it. And why not? Why not drink? Damn them. God damn them. All of them. And God damn this miserable lousy cruise. Even that wasn’t any good, like all the rest. He carefully removed Suzanne’s hand from his knee, and got up to get another drink. Somebody had decided that they must, they must, all eat together in Georgetown’s single restaurant. In the Greans’ restaurant.
The ensemble dinner in the restaurant was a catastrophe. A further catastrophe. But even worse was to follow. But at the dinner, Lucky finally blew up. There was a good deal of that Nothren-Suthren talk, at the dinner. It wasn’t really all that bad really, either. Grant had lived in the South, half of his blood had come from there, up into Indiana, though it was back before “The War,” and in fact he had two great-uncles buried at Gettysburg, one with the 19th Indiana and one with the 47th Virginia. He had always been proud of that, and Texas accents—any Southern accents—had never bothered him. On the contrary he rather liked them. But then, with his ear, he liked all accents. But when Harry (which was the name of Ferd’s other guest; he was the husband of Lois; Bert’s wife’s name was Betty-Lou) began to feel he had not been served fast enough, and hollered, “Hey, boa! Hey, nigga! Git that damn nigga wayteh ova hea, hea’? Ah’m hongry!”, even Grant was embarrassed. The Greens apparently, though, were not embarrassed at all. The waiter came. But Lucky was more than embarrassed.