The Western Limit of the World

by David Masiel

  Snow looked over at where the kid was doing what he called “spiritual exercises”—real heavy-duty weightlifting by the look of him. “What would you say if I told you I thought this guy was full of shit?” Snow said, holding up the book.

  “Merton? He’s not full of shit. I find him quite sincere.”

  “Oh, quite! I’m sure!” Snow flipped through a few more pages. “Problem I see with these Catholic God boys is they’re forever using logic to argue their point, logic and evidence this and that. But you get right down to it, they got no argument. They all end up coming back around to faith. I believe in God ’cause I believe in God kind of logic. Circular kind.”

  “Yeah,” said the kid. “I know what you mean.”

  Then he got down out of his bunk, dressed in his work gear, and went out for his night watch. Snow frowned, watching him go, waiting for some look or some snarl of repudiation, but he got none. He couldn’t tell if the kid was toying with him or sincerely understood his point. He lay there in his bunk wondering what the hell George Maciel was doing here anyhow, why a man that close to some godly understanding had come out here, into the bad open sea like his granddaddy. He wondered if it was true what he’d heard, that the kid had wandered into a cemetery with a shovel and started to dig up his own grandmother. Snow felt bad being a snoop, but he went over to the kid’s locker anyhow. There in the back, stuffed down behind his shirts, was the butt of something. At first he thought it was a pair of them num chucks that Ali was so fond of, but when he pulled it out he found an old leather flog, a regular cat-o’-nine-tails. Had flecks of blood on it too—a grotesque thing. He chuckled. The western church wouldn’t go for that, he knew.

  By the start of the morning watch, Paynor had contacted the Vessel Traffic Service and they waited in the outer harbor for the pilot boat to usher the pilot aboard and guide the ship through a breakwater to the inner harbor and the petroleum terminal. Snow went down through the poop deck, curling around the davits there and moving forward alongside the house. Marty and Ali were already out there working a hand wrench to remove a blank at the manifold. The manifold was a giant rack of steel pipes running beam to beam at the midship line, square and strapped and blocked together so all loading and off-loading could be done from the same place. The blanks were the flat plates that sealed the ends of the pipes.

  Snow went down to double-check they’d got the right tank line. He counted down and over, methodically, third row, second column. “Okay,” Snow said. “We’re ready to couple soon as we get inside. We’ll be loading number two tanks with ammonia, right straight across.”

  Marty and Ali waved and nodded. “Okay, bos’n, okay,” they said.

  All at once a Mexican Coast Guard boat appeared around the stern, came rushing up with a hail from its horn. Snow lowered the Jacob’s ladder while Maciel caught the monkey’s fist out of midair, arching upward as it did, dragging the heaving line along behind it. The kid hauled the thin line hand over hand and tied it off to the eye of a six-inch mooring line, which they no more needed than they needed a ten-ton anchor. The kid strained like hell pulling it up, the rope biting into his gloved hands and threatening to tear the gloves off. Snow had to laugh, watching him strain so much, his arms popping with tendons like he was all made of wire inside. He let him haul. The kid got her up and shoved the eye through a fairlead mounted in the railing and hooked it around a three-foot deck cleat. Snow liked how he did that—nothing fancy, but he did it.

  “Not bad for a Fairy God Boy!” Snow teased.

  “My grandfather used to call me that,” the kid said.

  “I always liked old Joaquin. Now go catch their stern line.”

  The kid didn’t say a word. He just marched aft without wondering or asking whether Snow didn’t have somebody else who could yank their arms off hauling up a mooring hawser from a motor-boat. Snow watched the Coast Guard officer climbing the Jacob’s ladder until he swung up and over the bulwarks and stood next to him. Snow disliked him even before the man said, “I need everybody identification.”

  The officer had left two enlisted sailors on the boat, one in the wheelhouse and the other standing guard by a machine gun mounted on the bow. He wore the rank of captain—he was no junior prick in training, but the real deal. “I need to speak with the master,” he said with halting articulation.

  “Master’s not available. He’s sick.”

  “With what illness?”

  “Nothing contagious,” Snow said. “You want the truth? I think the old man picked up a dose of the clap on our way through Bangkok. I keep telling him he’s too old for that Thai sandwich he likes so much. You should see his dick!”

  The officer straightened himself. “I do not want to see his dick, thank you,” he said.

  Bracelin emerged out the second deck door to the catwalk above them and stepped down the grated metal staircase to the weather deck, where he grinned big, making his face look weirder than normal, and stepped forward toward the officer. “Charles Bracelin, chief mate,” he said. He held the binder tucked under one arm and a leather pouch that looked like a money bag. “We actually met last year, this same vessel.”

  “It’s true? I don’t recall,” the captain said. “I need to see the master of this vessel.”

  “He’s pretty under the weather, I’d say,” Bracelin replied. “But we can take you to him for a quick authorization. I’ll sign the safety paperwork.”

  “So long as he authorizes burbally.”

  “Burbally?” Bracelin said.

  “Burbally, burbally,” the officer said, motioning his hand out his mouth like he was throwing up.

  “Verbally!” said Bracelin.

  “Yes, burbally! You do not speak English very well, is that so?” and looked down to where the ABs had unbolted the blank and were swinging the hose coupling from the terminal buoy. “You are not to start discharging until I get the safety papers!”

  “We aren’t discharging, we’re loading—ammonia and gasoline,” said Bracelin. “Anyway. Skipper’s this way.”

  Snow climbed the internal stairs behind Bracelin and the Mexican officer, then stood at the top and waited. From there he could see both outside to where the gunboat lay alongside and inside up the passageway, a dimly lighted corridor that stretched the entire width of the house, past the chief engineer’s and chief mate’s cabins. Snow kept to his post, looking down toward the gunboat, where the enlisted men chatted and smoked cigarettes. “Hey Georgie!” Snow shouted. “Tell them two to put the smokes out before they blow us all to Kingdom Come!”

  Maciel called down, waving a finger back and forth in front of him. “¡No pueden fumar! ¡No fumar!”

  The Mexicans looked irritated, flicking their cigarrillos over the side, the smokes hissing as they hit water. “Sí, sí—no fumar.”

  Meantime, down the internal passageway, Bracelin keyed his way into the captain’s outer office and ushered the Mexican officer inside. They were in there longer than Snow had expected, and about the time he started to wonder what was going on, Bracelin stuck his arm out and waved him down the passageway. As Snow reached the door to the captain’s outer office, the chief mate stepped outside and closed the door behind him, leaving the Mexican officer inside.

  Bracelin’s face seemed to take on a new set of angles entirely, like he was all set to implode. “We got a problem,” said Bracelin.

  “That’s what you call obvious from the look on your face.”

  Bracelin leaned close and spoke low. “This fuck wants ten grand. He’s calling it a harbor tax.”

  “For crap’s sake.”

  “Not exactly routine graft. He acts pretty goddamned cocky, you ask me.”

  “He know something? What’d he say?”

  “He just stared at me with them dark Indian eyes and told me the normal amount don’t apply.”

  “Maybe he’s just taking a flyer.”

  “We give him that much dough without a question and we’re the ones taking a flyer. I say no way—we
offer him the normal payoff and let it stand, see if he coughs up something.”

  Snow’s mind snapped with possibilities, and none of them were good, though he had to admit some were a whole lot worse than others. It made no sense—unless the coastie up in Frisco had put them out on the wire. He preferred a lone-nut theory, some Mexican CG officer with suspicion and a shot at a personal bonus. Snow nodded toward the door. “Let’s find out what he knows.”

  They stepped back into the captain’s outer office, where the Mexican captain smoked a cigarette and lifted his chin at Snow. “¿Está el jefe?” he asked.

  Snow didn’t reply at first, he just stared past to the door to the captain’s bedroom, wondering when the old man would poke his weary head out and fuck the dog complete. “Sí, sí, estoy el jefe,” Snow finally said. “¿Qué es este?”

  The officer was holding a small yellow piece of paper, neatly folded in half. He handed it over to Snow, who gently opened the paper and read it silently:

  PETROCHEM MARINER—ROTTERDAM

  Snow had almost let himself forget that name, but now it rushed back, and given the hard look of el capitán Snow didn’t think he’d be able to hold a lie for ten seconds. This was a moment he had refused to let himself think about. He had grown cocky or distracted or something. Or maybe he had always figured it would happen, just not now. If he was being a realist about it—as he was in most things—he should be happy it came here in Mexico instead of someplace stuffed and starched like the Canal Zone, or worse—South Africa. He blinked and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, then folded the paper back up and handed it to Bracelin, who peeled it open, reading without a trace of confession or emotion, just that cut-up face blank as a granite wall in the mountains. He stared at the CG officer and then at Snow.

  “Cinco mil,” said Snow, more weakly than he had hoped. If only he could have said it strong. He felt something slip out from under him, as if he were standing on wet ice and the slightest move might send him on his ass.

  The officer shook his head. “Dies mil,” he said firmly.

  Snow looked over at Bracelin and the two held a stare for a long count, and both knew they had no choice.

  “Fuck it, let’s get this over with,” said Bracelin, and pushed into the captain’s cabin. For an instant Snow saw the old man sitting on the edge of his bed, letting out a cough that sounded like a one-lung diesel motoring through fog. Then Snow stepped in after him and shut the door. He stared down at the sickly form of McFarland, who looked like he was about a day from death. “What are you two about?” the old man said.

  “Just dealing with Mexican authorities,” said Snow. “You know how they are, Captain.”

  “What dealings?” The captain craned his head around stiffly to see Bracelin going into the ship’s safe to pull out cash. “How much they squeezing us for?”

  Snow felt some pity for the old man. There were two kinds of captains: working skippers and general managers, and he’d known some among the latter who never got out of their slippers for an entire voyage. McFarland was decidedly in that camp. They had used that in their favor. He was the kind of captain Bracelin liked working for, since he had realized sometime back that he might wait fifteen years before he’d ever be master of his own vessel. For some companies a man who’d worked his way up the hawse pipe and never learned how to kiss ass doing it was doomed to a life as a chief mate at best. And of all things Bracelin wanted, he wanted his own ship most of all.

  In the absence of his own ship, Bracelin worked for the geriatrics he could control, the ones he could keep happy because Bracelin was the man who took care of business without questions—he was Supermate. Captain didn’t have to think, even if he had been capable, and McFarland wasn’t. So when Snow approached Bracelin with his plan, Bracelin bit, not only because he wanted the result—ten million to split three ways—but because he knew that the plan was so audacious as to be unthinkable, particularly for a man like McFarland, who didn’t have enough gray matter left to be suspicious.

  “Go back to bed, Captain,” said Bracelin. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “You’re the best mate ever worked for me, Charles. You got the con.”

  “Thank you, Captain. Time for your medication now.”

  “I’m starting to feel a little rickety again. I wonder when this is going to run its course.”

  “Hard to tell, Cap,” said Snow.

  Bracelin popped open a med bottle and slid a blue pill out with a big V carved in the middle of it. “V for Victory,” said Bracelin. “You got water there,” and the old man washed it down, nodded once, and settled his head.

  Back in the outer office, Bracelin came out with a bulging manila envelope and handed it over to the Mexican officer. Then he put one arm behind the man’s back and held the other out toward the door, and they followed him back the way they came. Snow watched the captain climb down the Jacob’s ladder to the gunboat, yelling “¡Vámonos!” at the deckhands.

  “Toss off,” Snow called to Maciel, and he pulled the lines free.

  “You know,” said Beth, “in England they’d think you just told him to masturbate.”

  “That right? I like that!” He called out again: “Toss off! Let it drop in the water!”

  Maciel did as he was told, and the line splashed below, the deckhands looking up and yelling, “¡Chingada! ¡Vago de mierda!”

  Marty saw this and called out, “Hey Jonah boy! You learn to heave line!”

  “Put a sock in it!” barked Snow.

  While the officer yelled in Spanish and swung the boat off in a rush of wheel wash, Maciel gathered in the Jacob’s ladder and rolled it on the deck, carrying it over to the storage locker while Bracelin went forward, waving his arm over his head toward Paynor on the bridge, peering out the window. “Let’s get this cargo loaded!”

  Making their way inside under pilot and tug escort was the most nerve-wracking hour of Snow’s life, including the war, since death didn’t bother him nearly so much as the thought of rotting in a Mexican prison. They completed the mooring, tying off two lines from bow and stern both, lines sagging toward the dock.

  Kairos, the pumpman, oversaw the loading operation while Snow kept to his watch from the bridge wing, eyeing Puerto de Salina Cruz with her tank farm on the north end, and twin radio towers, and outside to the jetty dividing the inner and outer harbors. He hadn’t felt this trapped since the Coral Sea. He half expected the gunboat to return, this time with reinforcements. His heart thumped behind his ribs and his mind whirled. Snow was never one to worry unnecessarily, but he knew their situation would depend on one thing: if el capitán was working alone for a payday, they’d be safe, but if it was all a setup, then the gig was really and truly up.

  Snow kept a silent vigil from the bridge wing with a radio and a pair of binocs and didn’t leave his post once in all the time they off-loaded. He watched crewmen come and go, sauntering into the port where they bought fish, and talked with locals in their halting patois. He saw a guy wearing a broad-rimmed Aussie-style hat, chatting it up with Beth and the kid. The scene was as natural as any other port where big ships called—no sign of authorities, no sign of suspicions.

  When at last the coupling was broken and the blanks reattached, the pilot came back aboard with a perfunctory nod, and the tugs whirled and worked their way into place at the bow and stern to pull the ship off the dock and out through the break in the jetty to the outer harbor. Snow watched their backside while the tugs released and fell away, and the ship steamed seaward under its own power. He felt almost giddy then, stepping into the wheelhouse to find Paynor and Bracelin bidding adiós to the pilot, who scampered down to the pilot boat and was off, and thereafter all Snow saw was the watery western horizon, and for a moment cruising out through the Gulf of Tehuantepec it looked like all would be sound for the trip to Panama.

  The illusion didn’t last long. Five miles outside, headed south-southwest, they were hit hard by winds known locally as Tehuan-tepecers
, a cloudless norther that lashed in at fifty knots and whipped the seas to a blue foaming frenzy, rocking the vessel in a corkscrewing motion that sent it creaking and popping for the second time in five days. Snow watched the foredeck flex through the seas, thinking she could only stand one or two more like this. He went back to work wearing rain gear, stepped outside to the roar of machinery and the clear evening sky on winds that made your scalp hurt. He kept looking astern toward Salina Cruz, a cold blue reach with whitecaps and surf, the kind of view where you might not see a boat coming for you, not until they were close-on.

  HAULING IN

  The norther finally died as the ship passed the light station at Puerto Arista, and the night watch came on at eight o’clock to gentle after-swells. The next morning the sun broke upward dead east and blazed a straight path into the noon sky, seas dead calm, and by then a port list was obvious to everybody. On the weather deck Snow found Bracelin moving up the port side with his binder and his steel sounding tape. From the tape’s end dangled a stainless steel disk, an emergency signal reflector the mate had permanently borrowed from a survival kit inside the covered life raft. The steel tape was spooled up on a reel with a folding crank on one side, and the mate worked it by popping the ullage cap and lowering the disk down until it slapped the surface of the cargoes. In this way, Bracelin measured tank levels in an attempt to diagnose the source of their portside list, and in the process managed to drag fifteen different chemicals out on deck, including a splash of caustic soda that found his leather work boots and started them to smoking.

  Bracelin stood upright and proclaimed Leaks in Australia, which meant Leaks Down Under, and then assigned Snow and Kairos to go down for a look around. Crawling tanks on a healthy vessel was routine work, but on Tarshish it was more like a toxic nightmare, and Snow would have assigned himself the task exactly a week from never. He would have put Kairos down under with Maciel, figuring the two would have plenty of Christian things to talk about while wandering in the Underworld. But Bracelin would have none of it. He only said, “I need experienced hands,” and then ran aft to douse his shoes with vinegar.