Pirate Talk or Mermalade

by Terese Svoboda

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  I

  Chapter 1 - 1718 - Nantucket Beach

  Chapter 2 - Home, an hour later

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4 - Three Months Later

  Chapter 5 - Another Six Months

  Chapter 6 - Dead of Winter

  II

  Chapter 7 - 1720 - Caribbean

  Chapter 8 - Indian Ocean

  Chapter 9 - 1722 Caribbean

  Chapter 10 - 1723 High Seas

  Chapter 11 - A Day Later

  Chapter 12 - Hours Later

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14 - Days Later

  Chapter 15 - 1723 Desert Island

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18 - A Year Later

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20 - A Week Later

  Chapter 21 - Six Months and a Storm

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24 - Boston Harbor

  Chapter 25

  III

  Chapter 26 - 1728 Arctic Spring

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  Also by Terese Svoboda

  Weapons Grade

  Trailer Girl and Other Stories

  Black Glasses Like Clark Kent

  Tin God

  Treason

  A Drink Called Paradise

  Cannibal

  Mere Mortals

  Laughing Africa

  All Aberration

  Cleaned the Crocodile’s Teeth: Nuer Song

  Heare the mermaides singing

  —John Donne

  …her body as big as one of us; her skin very white; and long haire hanging down behinde, of colour blacke; in her going down they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a Porposse, and speckled like a Macrell.

  —Henry Hudson, skirting the polar ice, June 15, 1608

  For Bill Raymond and Linda Hartinian

  I

  1

  1718 - Nantucket Beach

  I’ve seen boats as big as this whale. I’ve seen gryphons the same size, with teeth growing in even as they were taking their last breath.

  You have not. And not a live one.

  I’ve been to sea, I’ve seen all you’re supposed to, being at sea. I am sixteen, after all.

  If you’d stayed at home, you would’ve seen to Ma. I’d be a pirate twice, with two voyages under me, if I didn’t have that.

  Quit your carping. Go stand on its middle. Maybe it will release its wind if you jump on it.

  For sure it will stink to heaven if I jump on it.

  Let’s poke out its eye.

  It’s a wonder you’re not tired of poking whales, a’roving on the ocean like you do, with all the new sail.

  Here’s the stick—let’s do the eye.

  Cap’n Peters says there’s luck in a whale’s eye. Some men use saws on such as the eye, to examine the socket and take away the skull too.

  You told this Cap’n Peters about this whale?

  Cap’n Peters can see it himself. He’s anchored out beyond the neck, nearly done scouring the fresh-wrecked Abingdon. He’ll come.

  Our greasy luck! Then the sooner it dies the better, and not for anyone but us to collect it.

  It’s alive all right. Look at the eye.

  Help me with the stick. A donkey could haul it out, where could we get a donkey?

  If we had a donkey I wouldn’t be walking the beach looking for rope to catch the mussels on, would I? If we had a donkey, you wouldn’t be shipping out every time the wind blew and leaving me here with Ma, myself only in short pants still and no cutlass.

  We need a donkey. The smell alone will bring Peters.

  Do you believe in whales? I mean, that they talk?

  Two fiddles can talk. One calls, the other says Yes and then some.

  Whales dance when there’s boats coming with harpoon.

  The way pirates do on the gallows.

  Not all of them.

  They’re crying whales, not singing. Poke here.

  They swallow the pennywhistle and dance on the tips of their tails on top of the water. And sing.

  Whales cry about their future like all creatures worth killing. There’s a tear now, with Peters coming. Look—I can make it dance without singing.

  Let it be, it’s starting to bleed.

  I’ll let it be with a cut of the knife. If only I had a good one, if only Ma hadn’t sold that bit of a blade while I was gone.

  She’s sold all her brooches, down to the tin-and-garnets.

  She sold the true baubles after you were born—or gave them up, cleaned out by whoever she had after you had a father, cleaned out clean as a pike in a trough.

  They use beetles to clean the skulls when they’re empty. Cap’n Peters says so.

  Peters, Cap’n Peters—would he be the one seeing Ma now?

  He’s seen all of her, if that’s your actual meaning. How huge those skull-cleaning beetles must be, so big they can’t walk after all that eating, beetles that could eat all of every one of the colonies.

  Slippery here, whoa.

  Cap’n Peters has got his glass on us now. There, over the wave.

  No.

  Tease me like you don’t know he’s watching. Play foot-in-the-water. He’ll think we are but careless boys and won’t beat us when he sees us.

  We are but boys. If I only had a knife—

  If you grouse and slaughter the whale before him and he balks and whines, Ma will tie herself to the rafters and I will have to cut her down. It’s a poor revenge for her living from one man to the next, though she swears Cap’n Peters is her utter last.

  I told you to get her set right, to take Ma to someone while I was off at sea, a woman with a cure.

  She wouldn’t go, she said she’d have no business with someone like that, she didn’t need no one other than Father. She talks to Father from the rafters where you can see the sea out the little window, she talks to you out that window too.

  She doesn’t know who Father is.

  This be true, but still she talks.

  This fish is leaking like a ship come ashore.

  Whale, it’s a whale, not a fish. And if you would quit your poking at the eye, it wouldn’t leak so much. Poking it like that makes the sound it makes worse.

  You talk like a sea captain with your “Don’t this” and “Fish that,” a bloody captain, the kind I don’t take to.

  It’s the life of the sea, you said. Yo, Ho, Ho, you said.

  I will give you another punch to match the first.

  It breathes—hear it? Cap’n Peters says they are cousin to us.

  I can’t hear anything while you blather on about Cap’n Peters.

  I say we leave it alone because Cap’n Peters will pay us to chop it up. They’re bound to want the steaks and oil even if it be old, and some of the bone to hang their hats on, and bone for those who truss up the women.

  That’s real work, all that chopping.

  Aye.

  The bone is all I want—I can carve “The Apostle on the Desert” into the bone.

  I can carve that—one cut meeting another.

  You are a stupid boy. Look—it thinks it is a creature of the land now, it wriggles so. It wants to walk about on its tail.

  With the next big wave, let’s push it in with our backs.

  Let’s kill it.

  Die, die.

  What’re you whispering?

  Nothing. Die, die, or they’ll get you, you whale of us all, you fool whale.
/>   You are whispering.

  I’ll whisper if I want to.

  The whale’s dead anyway. Why else would it be on the beach?

  Not breathing like this it isn’t dead. Not yet.

  Look, Peters is bringing his hooks and axes. And a cutlass! There’s a knife.

  It’s soapy-feeling on the outside.

  Pitchforks and pries. Let’s poke it through to the brain before they get here, let’s poke it to make it dead before they poke it, so we can claim it and get the bone. I am grown, after all.

  Die, die.

  Why do you cry like a girl?

  I’m not a girl.

  Whale-lover, then. Crybaby.

  Listen to it breathe.

  I can’t hear anything but Cap’n Peters and his men beaching loud like six blacks banging dishpans.

  It’s breathing big.

  There—I’ve got the stick through, no thanks to you.

  It still breathes.

  If I hang on it here and pull down, the whole side will rip and they’ll know it’s ours. Give me a hand—

  2

  Home, an hour later

  Ma, there’s rope in my soup

  Eat it or you can’t watch the hanging.

  I can’t, not a drop more, Ma. All the chewing hurts my teeth.

  It’s bone, that’s all. Bone against bone. Chew it up, then spit it into your hand. See—a pig clavicle or a horse bone, not rope. Sit still and stop your wheezing and sneezing and snot-dribbling.

  The drumming’s so loud today, my head hurts.

  Old Hubble is getting his practice, best at the dirge in all the colonies I’d say.

  There—at the bottom of my bowl—see?

  It’s a bit of chew. If we sit just right, maybe we’ll see the beardtips flame again. I do love the rope.

  Ma.

  Any less punishment and the ocean would be crowded with rogues.

  Put up a rag to curtain it. Father must’ve been a pirate, I hate these hangings with such a fever.

  Eat your soup. And the bones too. I sold yesterday’s rope for those bones. And wipe your nose on my skirt. Your father, a pirate—what will you be thinking next? I’m on the lookout for a better man than that, boy, even Peters only takes boats that broke.

  Makes a person want to go to sea, your soup.

  You’d be your brother then, and curses to you. Hark—here’s the catch ‘o the day, the pirates walking.

  Brother is not so much at sea now.

  Brother had better be, and making coin for us too. Such black hair on that pirate—sure to use indigo as anything, in disguise.

  Ma.

  Stop your sneezing. Were you out standing in the sea this morning? Stay out of the water, you’re supposed to pull up the ropes, not go in after them.

  The ropes were caught.

  Water will kill you, one way or another. Is that the priest waving now?

  I could tell but for fat Morgan Little.

  He’s got to both say the condemnation and the Praise Lord. The magistrate broke his leg this morning climbing a stile and no one else will do it.

  Let me go off, Ma.

  You don’t want that food, it’s rotten, only good for throwing. Sit down and eat your soup.

  But Ma.

  Hush, they’re singing now—the pirates are singing. I heard these were merry folk, that they boarded ships singing songs with their knives out full and not between their teeth. That was their mistake, not having their hands free to grip the boat.

  They wanted a good cutlass.

  Singing makes you brave. Hear how many verses they have? The baker hiding in his hood can’t stand still for all this singing.

  The baker will dance with his bread.

  Look, he’s using an old rope today, Master Mason’s, the one he dipped his sheep with and can’t get out the smell.

  You know all the ropes.

  I have taught you well enough. Not so much the writing of letters or the sum gathering, but all of ropes and their histories.

  Plenty of rope here.

  They’ve soaked his beard in gum. You can hardly see the faces for the smoke.

  I wonder how many more are not caught, like mice in hay.

  The baker’s banged the heads together, jigging them up so close.

  I feel it.

  The mortal dance ought not to be done without someone watching. Look, look, I say. Fierce they are, and fierce be their Nancies. A sour look or two at choking.

  They dance in my soup.

  We ought to sell seats here. People like to sit and watch.

  People like to press close and not sit, they like to hear everything clear.

  It’s a shame, having to cut the bit that holds them up, with the price of rope as it is. But there’s a nice length left and I’m sure to get it.

  You can never catch your breath after. It’s a kind of pleasure for you.

  Hold your tongue. I see your friend is picking pockets again, collecting the coppers while they watch it to the end. He’ll take his turn.

  The far pirate’s still shaking.

  Where’s his family to pull on his leg and break his neck? The baker’s cut his rope too soon.

  I told you they all don’t hang. He must’ve swallowed a pipe.

  Or sung the right song. People do stop their gossip for a miracle.

  It’s worth living to see a miracle, isn’t it, Ma?

  Miracles only bring trouble. I’ve had my own, and worse. Be off with your friend now, and look into the pockets of those who are gaping the most. And don’t forget the Cap’n’s kit. He’ll have something in it for me, if he’s not drunk it away already.

  All he’s come in with is a wreck, and a whale washed up.

  Then he’s blessed enough and won’t hit me so hard. Be off with you.

  Don’t leave that bench, Ma. I don’t want you getting low while I’m gone, and trying the rope.

  You’re not to worry. All the rope I had was in the soup, knowing I’d get fresh.

  3

  Go ahead, finish it. Your brother’s caught the death of a cold anyhow and didn’t take but two spoons of it, only a drink from the bitters.

  A real sailor in him, like me, with a taste for bitters.

  Real bitters.

  The soup’s a pip, Ma. You’ve been stewing the heel of a boot at least, if it’s not the cursed albacore straight from the shell.

  Eat the soup and tell me what you are doing ashore and not hauling the fish or the fur. Your boat’s not due to port for another three months and what coin will I use if you don’t sail in with it?

  I need a woman for cooking and boiling and such and I’ve come ashore to marry her, Ma. I will marry a woman who will keep you from making over such soups as this.

  The sea has made you bold. But a wife will be another mouth to feed before others in bottom rags come crying with their mouths stretched wide like the robin birds. Only fools marry sailors.

  You’ve married them yourself, I believe.

  Marrying a man of the sea is like marrying a boat. They never come home. Or they take to pirating and they had better not.

  No pirating for me. I’m set to learn to whittle the whalebone. There’s plenty of money in it—I hope to do “The Shepherd’s Lad Standing against the Wolf” and “Samson Pulling down the Temple.”

  Aye, there are many who like it, especially those who are not the seafaring kind, who think sailors go out to look after a pool of fish with birds’ feathers and lures and bobbers and spend so little time troubling them that they learn to carve the bone.

  Brother can mind the shop, fetch me the customers and light the lamp.

  He isn’t a boy to mind even his mother, always running about and complaining to me about myself. But how shall we eat while you are whittling thus? Have you drawn a purse from a dead woman’s girdle?

  I’ve gained the means. I’ll tell you—

  Shshsh—not so loud on your luck. Someone comes along the passage now, your brother, I hope, and no one el
se, with whatever Cap’n has hauled in for me.

  To judge from the sound of his dragging, that kit of Cap’n Peters’ is ever bit as big as he is.

  So I do hope. That’s a sneeze! Like a dry drunk with the snuff, that boy.

  You’ll be killing him with his cold, having to haul such heaviness.

  Is that what they say to sailors in a good blow? Is that what they said to my Jimmy?

  Father is Jimmy now, is he? The one who died of a sailor’s pleurisy? Does this Cap’n Peters prefer to hear of Jimmy over all the others, the snot-drowned sailor of the seven seas?

  Where’d you hear of my Cap’n Peters—a’sailing?

  It was on land I heard.

  Ah, Peters is a brisk fellow, keeps a fine reputation on the docks. Why, many a boat would have him if he weren’t about in his own, many a farthing is wagered that he can outsail even the cutthroated pirate. He knows when a boat’s going down before she knows it herself, especially out by the neck.

  Brother! You’ve eaten my lot.

  She said to.

  She would eat it herself anyway during my labors. Which is why you sent me out just then, isn’t it, Ma?

  This bit of a heel and rope is not worth calling me a glutton, a thief, and a tyrant. A Caligula he thinks me, and that I’ll poison myself and him together.

  After these many months gone, at least she’s the same in her bludgeoning talk. No more height on you, then?

  Not unless I stand on a whale.

  Ha—you’ve got your wits about you at least. Ma, take his bowl and fill it with the last boilings—I know you have it somewhere for yourself.

  I keep a pot of seaweed worth nothing.

  That’s the one.

  See what the window looks onto now? Where we used to play? The rain tries to hide it.

  There’s a lot of sawed wood in that.

  It’s mostly them cleaning the holds of the Spaniards and pirates—two today. We’re always hearing the Dies Irae.

  Speaking of the Christian teachings, your brother’s come to have the banns said.

  You made no mention—

  He proclaims it, the sailor who’s out of a sail, a man made of romance even grander than yours of pirates. But the fair and first question is—did sweet Cap’n Peters ask after me? I’m the light of his light, what he turns his boat to first after tidying up the beach.