by David Masiel
“Transportation? Like a ride to the airport, or what?”
“To Monrovia. Aboard your ship.”
“Ahhh—I ain’t into that game anymore.”
“It is no game. They are laborers, but not the kind you think.”
Snow stood up. He wanted to jam his fist into Churchill’s smug bureaucratic face. He could feel the hard shove into a tight corner. “What about our agreed sum? We got five–six million in cargoes on that ship.”
“We rather doubt that sum. And owing to the new situation, we will wire a percentage now, and then the balance after delivery in Monrovia.”
“What the hell does my cargo got to do with Monrovia?”
“That is not your concern.”
“It is if I got to deliver it!” His voice strained forward aggressively. He took a breath and set his feet flat on the floor.
“We are all West Africans together here, which is something that Americans do not seem to understand. The colonial boundaries are what you would call capricious. And we have need of petrol in Monrovia.”
It smelled like a line of shit, like a big web of shit out there, stretching south across the border—who knew how far and how big? But these were no simple corrupt officials like some Mexican capitán. They had their long arms out, and Snow could feel them curling around his backside, corraling him. His brain ground to a halt. He stared in turn at the two men, their faces mute, stolid, needing him a lot less than he needed them. He felt a black hole spinning inside his brain. Jesus! He managed a nod. “All right,” Snow said, his voice coming out like a twelve-year-old boy with a sore throat. “But we’ll be looking for that deposit, and if something snags we’ll have to bypass Monrovia and sell in Lagos.”
“I understand,” said Churchill. “But there will be no need. You are right, we do want to do business with you, it is just that the realities of the market are apparent to us now. My chemist has already contacted me. He has tested your cargoes. Unfortunately, a fair number appear to be off specifications.”
“Wait a minute. Which is it, our cargoes are off spec or you’re in need of it elsewhere?”
Churchill twisted a pencil in his fingertips. “It is both. Must it be one or the other? It is both!” And he let out a wide laugh. “As I told you when we first spoke, we have no need of these base monomers. Styrene and the like—we have no plastics industry. For these reasons the earlier sum seems overstated. We will give you the equivalent of two point five million American dollars.”
Snow felt stomach acid churning. He had no choice here, because the truth was he didn’t want to sell in Lagos or anywhere else. Nigeria would be nothing but a bureaucratic nightmare of paperwork and suspicion. His contacts were here; and they were in process of bending him over a table.
Outside, his face burned from the heat of confrontation, and Snow found the cab motoring in the street. Night had fallen, which felt eerie enough, but now the streets were devoid of people, save for his crew, looking half passed out from boiled wine. Maciel sat curled up in back, his head propped against the roll bar. Beth smoked in front of him, casting her eyes about warily, and Bracelin was so torched he didn’t even care that Leeds had passed out with his head on his shoulder.
Snow opened the cab door and swung his trailing leg up with the help of his right hand, firmly cupped under his thigh. “Kissy oil terminal. Like right now. You think there’s a chance Paynor didn’t get rid of the crew?”
The cabbie took off driving.
“What the fuck happened?” Bracelin said.
“They want to split the cargoes between here and Monro,” said Snow, slapping at his neck, then scratching the spot without a second thought.
“What the fuck?” said Bracelin.
He grabbed the roll bar and shook the bush taxi on its springs until the jeep was bounding up and down, causing the driver to swerve and shout “Hey dere now!” and Leeds to jump awake like he was looking for somebody to choke.
Bracelin leaned up between the seats and let fly at Snow with a torrent of abuses and profane references to Snow’s mother. Fortunately for Snow it happened to be his bad ear, so he didn’t so much hear the haranguing as he felt it in the form of a saliva bath that he kept wiping away in the hope Bracelin would get the picture and quit spitting all over him without being told. “Shit happens.”
Bracelin let out an exasperated breath, sat back and scanned the streets as they drove toward the port. “The fuck I let you talk me into, old man. Would you look at this place!”
“You wanted into this!” Snow erupted, his brow sharp and flaring. He eased off grudgingly. To a grim scowl. “How about you take just a smidgen of responsibility.”
“I don’t know these people from fuck-all. They ain’t my people.”
“And who is, Charlie?” Snow said with dull irritation. “Who the hell is?”
Bracelin just eyed him, jaw muscles flexing like a man chewing on his own teeth, not because it mattered to him that he was alone in the world, but because he was politic enough to know that everybody else would think him an asshole if he admitted it. By the time the cab pulled into Kissy, they found Paynor alone in the wheelhouse, and the ship vacant save for Kairos. “Where the hell is everybody?” said Snow.
“Jumped ship,” said Paynor, his face as vacant as the tanker. “I was all set to dispatch the ones you said when that Ali character and two of his buddies cornered me and demanded pay for everyone. Afterward they all left. They’re gone. Even the cooks. Lucy’s out too. She told me to tell you ‘fuck you’ from her.”
“That’s great, Payne,” said Bracelin. “Thanks for passing it along.”
“She said you’d know what she meant. What’d you do to her, anyway?”
“Shut up, Paynor.”
Snow looked out at the empty deck and watched their cargoes being trucked off under armed guard. There wasn’t a thing in the world he could do about it, not any of it, not what people thought of him, or how hard they worked for him, or even who worked for him. Out over the lights of the deck he could see the mosquitoes gather, like they were all set to fly up his nose, and he imagined himself there on his last bed, swatting at them like old Joaquin.
THE ROAD TO NIMBA MOUNTAIN
A few miles out of Freetown harbor heading south, Snow lay in his bunk with a warm mist surrounding him. Though his eyes were closed he dreamed he could see through his lids like an amphibian. He was not asleep at all but living a lucid nightmare: floating in brown water with blood clouding, cyclone victims in the Bay of Bengal, dead bodies suspended around him, entangling him in their long arms, black hair, and burned mouths. Dutch Van Sickle appeared, red-haired and obvious, looking open-eyed at him, holding a marlin spike in one hand with blood all over the thing, coming for him with Joaquin Maciel rising up behind like a bulldog—
He awakened sometime late in the night to realize the propellers had stopped their churning, the engines turned back to idle. This was his cue. He rose quietly only to find the kid gone from his bunk. Snow dressed, staring at the unmade bed, then went down the passageway, wondering about what Ali had said about Beth never leaving him. Snow hoped it was true, even if he didn’t want to be her bahpah. The ship was empty, the only noises the constant drone of idling engines and the ship’s ventilation system. He stepped outside to the poop and found the deck completely dark save for a single stern light and the red and green glow of their running lights. The ship was just where he figured—a cove in southern Sierra Leone. Overhead the stars were shrouded by haze, a faint overcast of Harmattan dust.
No fires or electricity pulsed from shore, while west over dark ocean a distant lightning storm erupted along the horizon, crackling the reach of coast with dry lightning flashes that rippled toward them. From shore, a longboat heaved its way over light surf and paddled out toward the ship. Snow watched the paddlers swing alongside their port bow just as he reached the Jacob’s ladder, where Bracelin stood by himself. “You didn’t wake me,” Snow said.
“I didn’t want to
interrupt a wet dream.”
“Jesus, you got no idea.”
“That right? Well, good for you, least you got something to jack off to.”
“Naw, I mean wet like blood. I’m dreaming about blood.”
“Not mine, I hope. Don’t go dreaming about my blood. I don’t want that shit on me.”
Together they leaned over and watched the first one come up, a stocky black man in his twenties, nodding but saying nothing as he stepped aboard carrying a bag. There were eight of them in all—and below in the longboat was a wooden crate.
“We have to put you in the fo’c’sle,” said Snow. “It’s not luxury accommodations, but it’s the only way to get you through border controls at Freeport.”
“Show me,” said the first one, who was evidently the leader. He had wild hair rising off his head like metal springs, and he wore street clothes—jeans and sneakers and a black tee shirt emblazoned with a single white star set dead center on his chest.
“We’ll be in Monrovia in a few hours,” said Bracelin, as Snow led them in single file to the fo’c’sle, the men hoisting their wooden crate as well as a long massive seabag made of waterproof lined canvas and zipped closed on top. It had the knobby look of rifle butts inside.
In the paint room, Snow pushed aside five-gallon buckets of marine enamel and swung open a door leading into a small cramped crew’s quarters. “You bring your own food and water?” he asked.
“We have water, but that is all.”
“If all goes right, you won’t be aboard long enough to need food.”
Snow ushered them inside with a bad feeling about these eight. They had a sullen professionalism about them—talked to no one, took care of their own gear, stowing it inside the prow-shaped quarters as Snow flicked on the dim light to reveal bulkheads painted light green, and four bunks with mattresses and nothing else. A toilet was set directly forward. Then he backed out, pulled the door closed and dogged it, while Bracelin stepped over and set the padlock.
“Hey! Hey!” said a voice from inside. “You lock us in!”
Bracelin could scarcely suppress a grin. “Got to, bub. Not taking chances with unknowns! We’ll let you out when it’s time to disembark. We’ll be in Monro in three hours.”
“He lock in?” came another voice.
“I hear him,” said another.
“What we go do?”
“We go sleep. Work soon.”
Snow put all the paint buckets back in place, stacking roller extensions and gear up around the door until it was completely concealed. Then he backed out of the paint room, dogged the door, and found Bracelin under the fo’c’sle overhang.
“They got enough ventilation in there?” the mate asked.
“Sure. It was built for this. No one will ever know they’re in there.”
“I just don’t want eight suffocated men in that hold when we hit Monrovia. Last thing we need is a boatload of dead niggers.”
“They’ll be okay. I moved plenty of people in there.” They had been Cambodians and Sri Lankans, refugees typically, desperate, bound for wherever they could go and however they could get there. For a while in the mid-seventies she’d been a tramp tanker more ways than one; even her cargoes were tramps of a sort. “What do you think these are about?”
“I don’t know, Snow. You’re the one arranged it.”
“I didn’t arrange it. It got arranged on me. No fucking choice.”
“Man’s always got choices, Snow. Just sometimes neither of ’em is any good.”
Snow climbed up the forward stairs that led down on both sides of the centerline catwalk. At the top he looked forward across the arrow-shaped fo’c’sle deck to the sight of two beady eyeballs staring at him from deck level. He about jumped out of his skin before he realized the eyes belonged to Leeds, who lay on his stomach, his blond hair shining in the moon and his teeth back in. “What the fuck you doing, Tim? You scared the shit outa me.”
“Used to be you didn’t scare so easy, bos’n,” said Leeds, and Snow could hear his fists crackling like he was there in the dark on his belly on the fo’c’sle, doubling them up, playing commando. “Used to be you could laugh at this fucked-up world.”
“You know, goddamnit, you’re right,” said Snow. “I just don’t see a goddamned funny thing anywhere around me. You included! How’s that for a laugh? How’s that engine room doing?”
“Not looking so good. Got no engine crew. Ain’t been wiped since Brazil.”
“I’ll have the kid pull some wiper OT and be sure to avoid the engine room personally.” Snow stepped down the centerline catwalk aft, hearing it creak and rattle all the way along, until he saw them—two men talking against the manifold, well concealed from view at nearly every angle. Snow paused and stepped back to the port railing. He could barely make them out, only occasional movement in the shadows of the work lights. Then a thickly built man wearing deck covies and a work vest stepped out of the shadow and moved outboard, disappearing aft. Snow didn’t recognize him from his silhouette, so he pushed down the catwalk as Paynor got the engines churning to full ahead and the ship smoothed out. When Snow broke on the other side of the midship square, he saw no one aft, wondered if the figure hadn’t ducked down into one of the empty tanks, wondered if he could even rely on his own perceptions to be sure there really was a man. He couldn’t bring himself to go on some gameless hunt, had no energy for that.
He was in the room on his back for ten minutes when the kid came in, smelling of the engine room.
“What you been up to?”
Maciel was pulling off his shirt and making for a shower. “You probably don’t want to know.”
“How about you tell me anyway.”
“I was with Lisa. She has her room to herself now.”
“Lisa,” said Snow, and rolled toward the wall. “Christ.” He wallowed in that sickly pain for a minute or more; then his brain turned and he thought about what a good cover story it made, knowing how it would gnaw at him to think of it, to imagine them together doing what he ached to do. Snow felt pain radiating up out of his abdomen, his thoughts frazzled even without the mefloquine. He shivered once, felt hot in the room despite the open portholes, and stared at the kid’s form depressing the upper bunk. “Who was that you were talking to in the pipeline when I was coming in from the bow? I didn’t recognize him.”
Snow was taking a flyer, but in the silence that followed, he wished he’d asked the question in broad daylight, where he could see the kid’s eyes and know if he was lying. Now all he got was a cloister voice in darkness, a voice trained and measured and calm. “That wasn’t a he. That was Lisa.”
“Quit fucking calling her that, goddamnit!”
That name and the image of the two coupled hung there like a big foil balloon. Snow couldn’t tell what was true, couldn’t settle on a thought long enough to know anything one way or the other. He only knew the kid was cocky now and on top of it somehow, like he’d settled into the Larium and knew just what was what. He pressed PLAY on the ghetto blaster and out blared Bobby Darin wailing on “Mack the Knife.” Snow closed his eyes and felt his nerves crackle, felt a fever coming on.
What caused the hang-up getting into port at Monrovia, Snow had no idea, but next day, after his morning watch, they were hanging offshore in the company of a U.S. Navy vessel when the fever hit Snow full on and drove him to bed. Through an overheated brain, he tried hypnotizing himself on the springs under Maciel’s mattress. Pain ran through his nerves like mice in a maze. He tried staying motionless, practiced his belly breathing. Even his skin ached. Covering himself with blankets, he stared straight up and vowed to break the fever by force of will, drinking from a plastic gallon jug of rust-tinted water and staying bundled until he fell asleep.
Sometime in the night he came to consciousness with the kid next to him on a milk crate gripping his hand while Snow’s face flamed and he vaguely heard the echoes of his own voice in his ears, and he knew he’d been talking. Then he felt a cool w
et cloth to his head and opened his eyes barely to see the face of the kid saying stay calm Harold stay calm while that cool compress patted him lightly. He closed his eyes again, felt the hand there squeezing, all calloused now, squeezing even if Snow couldn’t grip back.
When he next awakened the kid was gone and his sheets were soaked through in the shape of his body, his forehead cool to the touch. He stumbled into the head feeling like he’d dodged one. He felt only general weakness in the aftermath of fever, but besides the knob up under the ribs, and a dull headache, he felt surprisingly pain free. Climbing two flights topside took no small exertion of limited energy. He was practically on his knees by the time he made the chart room, pulling himself into a bright wave of light as he entered the bridge. A pale yellow glow was all around where Bracelin stood beating the radio microphone on the control console like he was trying to wake somebody up, muttering through gritted teeth, “Fuck me! Fuck me!”
“Don’t want to,” said Snow, holding himself as tall as he could and moving his head in a pose of alertness. He stepped up alongside the mate, one hand gripping the wheel for balance.
“You feeling better?”
“Broke that fever anyway. So what’s going on?”
“I called that pilot office four times to get a boat out here so we could enter the harbor, and there’s no boat yet. You said Monrovia was a lock.”
Snow looked out across the morning reach. To the west he saw the U.S. Navy ship, a guided-missile frigate by her silhouette, offshore at twelve miles.
On the bridge, before the helm, engine controls, and navigation gear, Bracelin paced and worried out loud about Churchill’s men in the forepeak and about the harbor pilot who couldn’t seem to get his black ass out to guide them in. “We oughtta just goinourselves; who needs a fucking pilot and an escort tug at this shit-heel port? Liberia! It ain’t quite the Congo, I guess, but fucking-A.”
Snow assured him Monrovia was an open town and they had nothing to worry about with the pilot, let alone inspectors. They’ll rubber-stamp us, he thought, feeling his brain clatter to a raucous standstill. Voices pattered at his inner ear. Then he noticed Bracelin giving him a long look, with no small level of menace. Suddenly the mate seemed speedy. He had the look of it, his big black pupils taking over his eyeballs, the darting looks. Snow would have bet he hadn’t slept since they’d arrived in Sierra Leone two days before. He was standing no watches at all, since he was always on watch. It only made sense—he’d found his crank.