by David Masiel
“There ain’t no good storms,” said Snow. “Not on this ship. Now shake and bake, we got all hands on deck.”
The kid looked at him like all hands on deck was a nice way of saying the ship was sinking. He hauled out of bed without hesitation or grumbling, just down in a bound, stumbling and falling all over against the ship’s rocking. He dressed one-handed, the other holding to the bunk, and then Snow led him down to the second deck exit forward. The wind beat against the watertight door, and rain swirled. Underfoot came the rhythmic heaving and metallic groaning of the ship. Every time a door opened somewhere you could hear and feel the rush of air through the ship’s passageways, then the swooping down and thumping as the door shut. Through a porthole adjacent to the door, Snow could see the centerline catwalk stretching forward all the way to the bow. Eight feet over the chaos of the weather deck, Snow saw the entire mass of the ship, two football fields in length, flexing and thumping its way into waves, which came row upon row like alpine ridges.
The kid stood there quiet, bobbing from foot to foot, clutching a door dog with one swollen hand. Snow turned evenly to look straight at him. “You gotta relax, buddy. Gotta go with the flow of the ship. Feel it under you. That’s all sea legs is: you get with the ship. Like an extension of your own legs. Then you’re free to ply the oceans!”
Maciel gave a nod that looked like a shiver.
“Now see there,” Snow said, motioning out the round window. “That’s where we’re going. And there’s two things you gotta understand.” He tried to talk over the sound of the storm, but his voice came a little ragged, like he couldn’t quite clear his throat. “You stay behind me and you do what I tell you, and beyond that you always take one hand for you and one for the job, got that? There ain’t no choice here. You might as well make the best of it.”
Maciel breathed and gathered himself. Snow saw him calm, saw his eyes go a little dead. “It’s okay,” the kid said. “I can do it.”
Snow could smell the sleep on his breath. It reminded him of his last days with his wife and son, kissing the little guy in the darkness of midnight before striking off on a ship in ’52. From somewhere in some room came the tinny sound of Sinatra singing “The Way You Look Tonight,” or maybe that was memory too. He thought now it was—he was hearing things now. He took a good lungful of air, then nudged the kid and pointed out spots to find protection if a rogue broke on top of them. Maciel gazed at all of it as if staring into the abyss, his lips mumbling prayer.
Snow caught some movement out the corner of his eye and looked back to see the old man there—the captain himself—hair stuck up and legs wobbling to the base of the stairs behind where Maciel and Snow stood. He held to the railing, wearing deck shoes and a long raincoat over flannel pajamas. As he hit the base of the staircase, a long thick arm reached from up behind him, turned him without sound, and took him back up.
At first Snow thought he’d hallucinated McFarland there, a queer sight, dressed as he was, there and gone so fast Maciel didn’t seem to notice. Snow turned to face the porthole and the storm outside, saying, “First job is to lash those loose nitro tanks, okay?”
“Okay,” the kid said, then crossed himself.
Men all genuflecting, or buns-up kneeling toward Mecca, or the animists rubbing at talismans, it didn’t much matter; they gave Snow the fantods. He gripped the lever on the watertight door and looked down to see a semi-steady dribble of seawater leaking into a puddle at the door’s base. Then he shoved the door open and stepped out and took needle spray to the face. Then came the roar and hiss of wind and rain together. Then the creaking of the ship as it hauled itself over a peak and thumped a trough, burying her bow. His rain suit rippled and billowed like a sail as he moved up the centerline catwalk. The wind gusted and paused and feinted before it whipped back the way it had come and then drove on, like a hard wall shoving against you. With one hand he slid along the railing and a moment later felt the light touch of the kid’s hand on his back. Snow paused and let it stay there, feeling the pressure. He liked the feeling—gave him someone to lead through the shit. Maybe that was all he needed. Someone outside himself. He turned and looked at the kid’s eyes, saw fear and worry.
A burst of white water fanned up and back in a wedge that smashed over the fo’c’sle deck, tore loose another rack of nitrogen bottles, and sent them scattering aft along the catwalk, like bowling pins come to attack the bowlers. Four or five piled up on one another and two rolled through the railing. One landed with a dim rattle, but the other hit neck down and snapped off at the valve. The bottle flew up like a rocket. Then it turned down and slapped and battered its way through the pipelines and finally erupted out of the entanglement and went end over end overboard in a sweeping shriek. “Ho!” Snow yelled at the kid. “You see that?”
“What? See what?” The kid couldn’t see anything but yellow rain suit.
When Snow looked forward, the entire ship shuddered underneath him. The nitrogen bottles weighed one hundred pounds each, and they bounced on the catwalk and chattered against the grating. “You stick here!” Snow said, and scampered down the stairs to the weather deck. He hit the midship square, a small blockhouse structure converted to a tankerman’s locker, where he found a spool of yellow polyethylene rope. Back on the catwalk, he grabbed the kid’s vest and hauled him toward the bow. Snow saw Leeds on the weather deck forward, at the base of the protected overhang formed by the fo’c’sle deck, shielded from the slamming torrent of white water as he eased himself down through a deck hatch and into the forepeak tank.
Snow pulled off a length of rope, threw a bowline on one end, and strung out twenty feet. He made a loop in one hand and drew his knife blade upward to part the line. He tied a fast overhand knot to keep the end from unraveling, then leaned close and shouted in the kid’s ear. “Start gathering them buggers up! Lash them together with this and choke ’em to the railing!”
The kid had happy feet, like he was running in place. But he had strong hands for a skinny guy. They worked ten minutes securing bottles, then moved down to the protected hatch where Leeds had gone down. Snow held the kid by the shoulder and leaned close. “You did good there, buddy. Now you’re gonna be welder’s helper. You got one job: keep Leeds supplied with rod.”
The kid had lost the wash of fear on his face, and Snow figured he’d been through his baptism, and now he’d just have to deal with the confirmation. Toward that end, he puked on his way down to the weather deck, and made his way aft to the midship tankerman’s locker to haul two heavy tin cases of welding rod back for the welder. He tottered and nearly pitched over the railing as he slid along the catwalk with two cases on his right shoulder. They weighed thirty pounds each, but he fought them the whole way and won. Snow met him at the base of the stairs and took the top one, then motioned the kid to follow him to the manhole leading down into the forepeak tank. Snow showed him how to choke the cases with two half hitches, then watched as the kid lowered the first one down hand over hand into the tank. “Climb down after it. I’ll lower the next.” And with a grim nod, the kid scooted backward down the ladder and Snow lowered the second case, then followed into a world of noxious household ammonia and suffocating weld smoke, odors to assault your nostrils while your ears and brain rang low with the rooooom-roooooom of the bow hitting waves. Leeds had rigged a mist machine, pumped water vapor that condensed and rained down on them to wash the ammonia vapors out of the air and make it possible to weld without blowing them all to hell.
There in the middle of the narrow walk, perched ten feet off the bottom, knelt Leeds. He had stanched the flow of ammonium hydroxide by stuffing sealer compound into the widening split, and now ran a bead to attach a plate-steel doubler that would seal it off completely. The strobe effect dizzied Snow an instant. He couldn’t believe Leeds was working down here without a respirator. Maciel carried the heavy case of welding rod by the choked line, scampering along the scaffold. When he reached Leeds he yelled, “Now what?”
“Bu
st it open!” Leeds yelled up at him.
“How do I do that?”
“Throw it down!” He made a motion with his arms.
The kid hefted the box and threw it onto the heavy planks of the scaffold, hitting along an edge, the weight of the rod inside splitting the box along one seam.
“Peel it open!” Leeds yelled.
The kid reached with his gloved hand, winced as he contacted the jagged edge of the metal box, and pulled his glove off with his teeth to show blood. With his bare fingers he gingerly peeled the lid back, sliding out three thick welding rods. He slapped one into the outstretched hand of Leeds. “That’s it!” Leeds said, in his muffled shout. “Now you got it! Keep ’em coming!”
Then the kid sat down. He might have been okay if he’d just kept on his two feet, but then Snow felt the presence of someone behind him. It was Bracelin. The mate threw his rain hood back to reveal his scarred face and long black hair. “Who’s dog he been fucking?” said Bracelin.
“He worked hard to get that rod down here,” Snow said. “He’s doin’ good.”
“He looks like he’s gonna puke all over himself.”
“He already done that!” Snow shouted, then coughed as he laughed, then grimaced at the burn in his eyes, and pulled his rain suit hood around to try breathing through that. The welder looked up, his mask robotic, then popped his stinger to life, and began drawing another bead. Bracelin was unfazed by the odor of ammonia, seemed to breathe the stuff in lieu of oxygen. The mate edged past Snow and moved along the narrow catwalk toward where the kid sat, and kicked him in the leg.
“Are you the dip fuck left the door to the second deck open in a gale?”
Maciel looked up like he might throw up again, only this time all over his boss’s shoes. “I thought I dogged it.”
“Well, you didn’t dog it, and now we got flooding all down that passageway!”
“Mr. Bracelin—” the kid said.
“Don’t Mr. Bracelin me, shitbird. Call me Mate. Ain’t you figured that out yet?”
“Mr. Mate—I mean Mate. Mate.”
With a quick motion, Snow put a hand to Bracelin’s shoulder to stop him.
“Your girlfriend’s sick,” Bracelin said, heavily into Snow’s ear.
Snow replied with a gentle edge. “I got it here, Brace, he’s my crew.”
“He’s a maroon.”
“He’s working his tail off.”
“He’d better. Leeds! Good goddamned work!”
Then he climbed out the hole into the rain.
The kid looked green as seawater as he went back down on his haunches. Snow grabbed him by each wrist, lifted him, and for a second thought the kid’s arms might tear loose. But he finally got him up and they stood facing each other, the ship heaving around them. Snow held to the kid’s wrists, smiled sweetly, and pushed his thumbs deep between the tendons, pressuring the kid’s nerves. He felt the kid’s body go limp, his arms fanning outward in the pose of crucifixion, like he was trying to flee from his own pulse, backing up his arms, numbing his shoulders, his neck, his whole head. “Harold, wait—ahhhhh, ahhhhhhh—”
Snow watched the kid’s head roll back and make a wide circle as he groaned, eyeballs doing cartwheels, welding arc flashing. “It’s all right now, Georgie.”
Snow didn’t let go, he pressed harder. The kid’s eyes showed white and Snow thought he might faint dead away, and with that he eased off, could see the nausea melt away. Only then did he let him go. The kid’s face eased into lightness.
“I learned that from a yogi I met in Calcutta! He taught me the secret ways. There’s nerve lines everywhere, you know. Leeds there, he can kill you just by poking you with his index finger. You’d never know it to look at him, but he’s got what they call dim mak. The Death Touch. He’s studied up.”
“My whole body—” The kid couldn’t put it into words, like he could bound his way to the ladder and fly out. His face lost all that pent-up fear, and Snow could practically see the euphoria swell inside him, washing away everything that came before.
EL JEFE DE SALINA CRUZ
Two days later the storm had broken and Snow went topside to the chart room, where he found the ship six hundred miles off Acapulco, blown as far away as Clipperton Island, a scary craggy rock of an atoll that had once been home to phosphate miners and military men gone mad. He moved forward into the wheelhouse to find Paynor, Lucy the Third, and Beth, who was standing her watch at the helm. Snow stepped up to the glass next to Paynor. “Hey, Second, you manage to contact one of them brokers out of Mexico City?”
“Not yet,” Paynor said, and pretended to consult a chart, then looked off and twiddled his thumbs and combed his hair with his fingers. After a decent enough interval—about the time he might claim it was his idea—he took up the ship-to-shore radio and got on the horn with a broker called Muñoz, talking like Tarzan before he finally paused in frustration and blurted out, “Is there somebody there who speaks English? That’s right, inglés. Americano.”
Snow gained eye contact with Paynor and reached a hand for the radio telephone. Paynor glared at Snow with abject hatred. Twin tendrils of hair grew straight down out of his nostrils, black hairs that hung nearly to his upper lip. Snow could barely resist the temptation to reach up and pluck them.
“Hang on,” said Paynor, “I got someone here,” and Snow took the phone.
Lucy the Third was eyeing the scene with great interest, while still managing to give navigation orders to the helmsman. She consulted their working chart, which lay flat on the chart table set in the starboard aft corner of the wheelhouse.
“Sí, sí,” Snow said into the phone. “Vamos de compras. ¡Tenemos una tarjeta de crédito!” And he laughed toward Paynor, knowing the man didn’t get the joke.
Five minutes later they had contracts for ammonia, gasoline, and aromatic hydrocarbons from a Pemex refinery at Puerto de Salina Cruz, part of it bound for a fertilizer plant at Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica, another part for a chemical plant north of Valparaiso, Chile, and the rest for various ports along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Snow liked the idea of gasoline—with all the uncertainty of international markets, not to say his own contacts in West Africa, gas was a safe bet. People could always use a little base petrol, and they’d always pay for it.
Having proven his superiority in matters of language and business, Snow decided not to push the second mate any further, particularly not in public. The entire scene made Paynor’s birthmark twitch twice as fast as normal, like the caterpillar might crawl right off his face. Despite everything Snow hated about Paynor, the guy could flat out navigate a ship, maybe even better than Bracelin, especially when it came to interpolating the screwy variations you got with the SatNav unit and augmenting with celestial when the thing claimed you were somehow steaming through cornfields in Nebraska. He supposed they should keep Paynor around as long as they could, but damned if he wanted to watch him finger that growth on his lip all the way to Sierra Leone.
Smooth as dead-calm seas they made way for Salina Cruz, steaming coastwise south through the warming reach of Mexican waters. Off watch, Snow lay in bed looking through a stack of letters, most of which he’d read several times. On top was a new one from Australia, the return address identifying the sender as Harold Manwaring-Snow, a liquor salesman from Perth who’d sent a half dozen letters over the past year, claiming to be his half brother, not to mention an amateur genealogist whose primary interest was tracking the amorous adventures of Harold Snow, Sr. Snow’s father had sailed around the world sixty times in his career and managed to leave behind a child on the average of one per trip. Snow skimmed through and found he had two new siblings, one called Harold Delgado from Chiclayo, Peru, the other Harold Mupete from Dar es Salaam in East Africa. These were added to a host of others: Harold Velji and Hadley Kahn of Karachi, Pakistan, and Harold Sekhon, a Sikh from Punjab. The list went on. Apparently the old man had not only had a stream of kids, he’d somehow managed to get them all named Harold. It was goddamn
ed surreal.
Snow thumbed through the rest of the stack: the last letter he’d received from his son was now eight years old, and one from his ex-wife now twenty years old. Still, he carried them, along with the rad report from the Feds, and then the one he was looking for, return address Liberia. He held it up before his reading glasses and reread the letter, wondering when the information would be of use to him.
Dear Snow,
Received your note yesterday and can confirm that a miner by the name of Haroun Abudjah does work at the Nimba Mountain facility. Can put you in touch as necessary. As for the other situation, I have to say that the politics here are degrading. Went to your house along the St. Paul and found Yasa safe and sound, though I understand the oldest boy has joined some sort of paramilitary group, an offshoot of a religious organization, from what I can tell. All in all, things are growing ever more tense. Natives are restless, as they say. FUASW.
Sincerely—R. P. Thorson
Snow felt a surge of excitement. He kept thinking of that first time he’d told Beth about his connection to Liberia, and how ever since then he’d wanted to take her there, to a certain house on Goodhouse Creek, a two-story slave colonial he’d built himself. “It’s a slice of heaven up there in the mountains!” he told her.
He got out of bed and found the kid’s books all stacked and dried and now sitting under chunks of iron plate in the hope of restoring their readable shape. Snow caught their titles, religious tracts all: The Confessions of St. Augustine, The Seven Storey Mountain by some Trappist named Merton, allegedly an oath-of-silence order, though near as Snow could tell the guy couldn’t shut up about himself. Snow sneaked peeks at the stuff. He read where Merton got some broad knocked up in England and had to flee to the monastery to figure out how to forgive himself. Snow wondered if maybe the kid was in the opposite camp—he’d done something in the monastery and now fled to sea in a vain attempt to sleep nights.