The Brotherhood of Pirates

by William Gilkerson

  “Which is the author?” I held up the two histories.

  “Johnson’s the proper author,” he pronounced. “His book was attributed to Defoe by a biographer—Harvard chap named Moore—in 1939, bit of a theorist who got everybody believing him because he was such a big professor. I wonder if he actually ever read Johnson. If he had, he’d have known better. Poor sod reckoned that since old Captain Charles Johnson chap couldn’t be located as to who he was, it must have been his own beloved Defoe. A better biographer will come along in the next few years who’ll demolish him with a raking broadside. If not . . .” he growled, “I’ll do it myself.” He turned back to his girly pictures. I decided to buy the Johnson book.

  The third box of pewter went with us to Mr. Pipe’s antique shop the following morning by taxicab, with no costumes or roles. He was a pale and scholarly gentleman, reading, blowing clouds of tobacco smoke that billowed from a huge meerschaum pipe and rose, forming a layered haze that stirred itself on the breeze of our entry. In no time, we unpacked the pieces that had been selected for him—and they were the questionable ones, with features that the captain’s references had not shown.

  “What does this mean?” he asked, indicating a flower-shaped cartouche on a Georgian teapot.

  “Could be Bracegirdle’s mark,” said the old gentleman, rummaging among his books. And so the morning went, with every piece being carefully examined. Mr. Pipe took the role of teacher, as the captain listened and looked at the books he was shown. It went on for hours. Periodically, I escaped to the outside air of the sidewalk, but the captain stuck with it and, in the end, accepted the old gentleman’s revisions to his own pricing, and a favourable deal was done. We did not get quite as much money as we had hoped for, which I asked him about.

  “Considering that old darling knows ten times as much as I do about what we brought him, and can’t be tricked, and paid cash, I reckon we scraped over that shoal without too much damage. There we had an authority.” Our last taxi shuttle dropped us at the shop of Madame Lipstick. “Bring your new book,” he had ordered; I did, and was glad of it, as things evolved.

  Madame Lipstick was a stretch younger than the captain, but that was no obstacle to their apparent interest in one another. I was offered a comfortable chair, where I sat in the perfumed atmosphere, trying to read about the pirate Bartholomew Roberts, who took over four hundred ships between 1719 and 1721. The captain was all charm and chitchat in the background, and they hadn’t even begun to look at the pewter. Bartholomew Roberts was very good at pretending his ship was something it wasn’t, in order to board ships he wanted to take, I learned. He had been an honest Welsh sea captain who was captured by pirates, and forced, and took to the life so well as to get his own ship within six weeks. Among his various peculiarities, he drank only tea, didn’t allow gambling, and conducted regular prayer services. For battles, he donned a fine red and gold coat, and wore a red plume in his hat.

  At some point I was distracted from my reading by the conversation, which had at last turned to pewter. Here was no scholarly discussion; each saucer, creamer, or saltcellar was unwrapped like a wedding present. For Madame Lipstick, the captain had selected all the daintiest things we had to offer. “Ohhh,” she squealed, holding up an ornate little goblet with the mark of Thomas Boardman of Hartford.

  “Exquisite,” he agreed, “and most particularly in your hand, milady.”

  I found it embarrassing, and had to go out to the sidewalk for some air. It was the first of several outside visits. When the pair finally got into money matters, she had no challenge to his appraisal, except the price was out of her reach. She told him about landlord difficulties she was having, along with inventory problems, speaking eloquently on the trials of a single woman in a man’s world. She had known a good man or two. She smiled, and a tear squeezed out of her eye. Sympathetically, he took her hand in his, and dropped our price by 25 percent. This caused her to offer him sherry, and then another one after that. At some point, while standing outside during rush-hour traffic, I turned and looked in at them through the glass, and saw with alarm that he was stroking the inside of her elbow, grinning at her with a kind of helpless look that made me go back in abruptly, setting off the bells over the door. He did not disengage.

  “My dear,” he said to her, “God’s bells are telling me to be a gentler force in your life.” He reduced our asking price to half, leading to a quick bargain sealed with a big hug, of which I had no part. According to my rough calculations, after all his discounting, we had gotten our price.

  But he was not done with her. After we had been paid, he lavished kisses on her hand in a way that I wanted to turn from, except she was looking at me and tittering, and he was also looking at me, catching my eye with a wink. To my horror, I saw that his hand was working her jewelled ring off her finger with some assistance from his teeth. As I watched, the ring slid off and vanished between his lips.

  “My dear.” He straightened. “How can I express to you my delight that this fleeting exchange of a few earthly treasures has given me the more divine treasure of your own company.” He managed this somehow, and more, without any indication that he had her ring in his mouth. During our good-byes, when she had given him her card with her private telephone number, and while I was still in a stunned condition, I couldn’t avoid Madame Lipstick’s perfumed embrace. It left us both with the same smell as we made our way down Charles Street, his cane twirling.

  “Now,” I said to him, “I know for sure you were ready to rob that yacht.” By way of response, he took the ring out of his mouth, gave it a wipe, and handed it to me with barely a glance at it.

  “Here’s your consolation prize,” he said. “Have it as a souvenir. It’s brass and glass, by the way.” Still, I was shocked, which gave him a chuckle. “The treasure’s when she realises I’ve nicked it from her, an’ she’s had a sweet dance with a demon lover. If I went to see Madame Lipstick again, she’d wear a real ring for me.” I blushed. He laughed, and whisked us to a fancy restaurant, to celebrate what he called our success at alchemy.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Prawns and Creole sauce,” he answered as a waitress put an appetiser in front of me.

  “I meant alchemy. What’s that?”

  “Turning lead to gold,” he saluted with his glass.

  “How could anybody ever do that?”

  “By dancing a good dance. Preferably not on air. In our own case, by exchanging a bunch of lead, with a bit of antimony and copper in it, for this,” he patted the money belt in which he was carrying the wads of dollars we’d gotten. “I reckon the family’s share will serve your purposes, eh?” I was uneasy that we hadn’t gone at once to a Western Union office and wired the inn’s money, but he pointed out their safes would be locked for the night. “I’ll do it first thing in the morning.”

  Our celebration supper, as he called it, was much given to his thoughts about the American navy hero John Paul Jones, who was a famed lover, and who had gained more fame by simply repeating the basic tactics of all the pirates. “Surprise, timing, patience, and misdirection,” he summarised after a lengthy dessert. “They never fail, whatever your century. I daresay you’ve seen them all demonstrated during the past couple of days, and in just that order, no?”

  After supper we strolled to look at the great city by night, finally turning back toward Charlestown by way of a dark lane that led directly toward the waterfront. The street’s only life, and light, came from a saloon with red neon in its windows.

  “Hey!” said a gravelly voice as we were passing the place. A piece of shadow detached itself from the greater darkness of an alley, and moved toward us. “Hey, gimme a quarter!” When we paid no attention to the beggar, the man hastened around us, and planted himself right in our path, hand outstretched like a claw. He was a big man, wearing motley clothes. His beg was a demand. “Gimme a quarter,” he repeated. When we went around, he again skipped ahead of us, growling like an animal, the same message
, now with a threat, moving to block us entirely.

  “Yer,” said the captain, stopping, “wat be’ee about my ’and-some?” It sounded like a foreign tongue.

  “Gimme a quarter.”

  “Be’ee mazed?”

  “Gimme a quarter.” Our assailant became more intense, and somebody else came out of the alley.

  “You’re not asking for enough,” said the new voice approaching. “You should get a dollar.”

  “Gimme a quarter,” repeated the quarter man.

  “Give him a dollar,” said the ominous newcomer. “How about two dollars?”

  “Git on,” said the captain, “don’ee come the maister wit we.”

  I’d admired his ploy in using another language, pretending not to understand, but it wasn’t working, and every nerve ending I had was telling me that we were in trouble. They were like the Moehner boys, but worse. I hoped he would just pay their tariff, letting the thousands of dollars that he had around his middle stay where they were, and the two of us safe and sound. These villains looked real, and tough enough to make me move close to him. And they had reinforcements.

  “What’s up?” said yet another voice from the direction of the alley.

  “Gimme . . . uh,” said the quarter man, who found himself interrupted by a hard, direct jab in his solar plexus by the tip of the captain’s walking stick, striking like a snake. The blow was instantly followed by a backstroke that clipped the dollar man somewhere in the area of his ear, as best I could tell. The whole thing happened so quickly, it was hard to see his moves, just two men dropping like stones to the pavement. The quarter man sat in an upright position, making loud, gasping noises; the dollar man writhed, clasping his head and groaning. Before I could make sense of it, the captain whisked me around the corner, and over the bridge to Merry.

  The following morning, Friday, dawned with a smurry, drizzly sky, so we breakfasted below, and then the captain left, wearing oilskins, leaving me to mind Merry for the day. He would wire the inn’s money, and tend to his own Boston errands. “Read your books,” he said. I wanted to go, too, but had to remain to sign for deliveries he expected. I also had to telephone home again, reporting that the mission was accomplished and the money was on its way, and it was nearly all we had hoped for. That was my first order of business, so off to the headquarters building I went to make my collect call.

  This time Mother answered, accepting the charges through a crackle of telephone static. She was much relieved by my report. Her own news was more disturbing. Aunt Karen’s condition had worsened further; Robin was by her side in the hospital. She was being as well attended as possible, but was in a lot of pain. Authorities from Halifax had been to the inn, making inquiries about Captain Johnson. The static on the line prevented me from getting any more than a garble, so I said good-bye, hung up, and walked back over the wet cobblestones to Merry.

  Passing Constitution, and approaching the ladder down to the float, I spotted my friend Mathew, who did not at once see me because he was having a conversation with people on a two-tone green sport-fishing boat. As I watched, he was gesturing toward Merry. I called to him. He turned, saw me, hastily waved off the boat, and gave me immediate attention. He was off-watch, and suggested we go below on Merry and catch up with each other. He had seen us in the limousine, coming and going, and then all the taxicabs. “What have you been up to, pal?” he wanted to know.

  I had to explain why I couldn’t invite him aboard; I’d gotten in trouble for it before, and that’s how it was, but I could offer him a cup of coffee if he didn’t mind standing on the dock. He was cheerful about that. He was the only friend of my trip that I had met on my own, and who had taken a kindly interest in my life—enough to stand in wet weather to keep me company. He was glad for me that we had done our business in good order, gotten a fair price, and such. “And I hope you didn’t take any cheques? Good,” he approved when I assured him we had taken only cash. “How much did you get?” I said it was enough to make our trip worthwhile. His concern turned to Merry, and her crippled motor. I told him it wasn’t yet fixed.

  “So you’ve got no working electrics, or lights . . . or radio?” he asked. I was proud to be able to tell him that we did not need electrical things, which he found impressive.

  “So, you’re on your own!” he approved, asking what protection we carried.

  “Protection?”

  “Any guns? You’ve got antiques, but do you have anything that actually works? Shotgun? Rifle? Anything in case you needed it?” Bothered by his line of questioning, I told him he would have to ask the captain about that. During our conversation, I had been seated in the cockpit, in oilskins, and it seemed a good moment to get in out of the wet. I promised to visit him later.

  “How long you guys gonna be around?” he asked. I said I didn’t know, maybe when the engine was fixed, and ducked below.

  With nothing to do for the first time in a long time, I picked up the book I had bought, leafed to the page where I’d left off with Bartholomew Roberts, then cast it aside. I was tired of pirates in books. He had spoiled that for me. The other choice, his primer of navigation, was no more appealing, so I combed Merry’s bookshelves, where almost everything was old. Overhead, the spaces between the beams were packed with rolled charts for the oceans of the world. I could not get interested in any of it. My mind had been given too much to digest, and I skipped lunch.

  In the afternoon, the captain’s delivery showed up, a sealed box from a Boston printer, which I signed for. I stowed it in the vacancy where the pewter had been, then tried to take a nap. I lay in my bunk with restless mind, listening to the loud ticking of Merry’s brass clock, until the captain returned, sliding open the hatch. “Put on your rain gear, follow me, and I’ll tell you the bad news.” I scampered above, pulling on my oilskins, and learned while walking along the dock that the inn’s money had not been wired because of a union strike, with no end of it in sight. It would take days to open a bank account and transfer funds.

  “Problem with modern systems is they break down. So we’re on our own again, and that means we sail on the next tide for Grey Rocks.” He was done with his own Boston business, whatever it was. By his reckoning, the winds we had fought to get here would favour us for the trip back. “It’s always a bit of a roll of the dice, but if the weather does what it should, we’ll be home in three or four days. What would you do?” I agreed we should go. “Good show. Call your mother and tell her what’s happening,” he said as he opened the door to the headquarters building, “while I thank the captain for his hospitality to Merry.” Off I went to borrow the telephone again, but with no answer at the inn. This was odd, because the inn’s first rule was that there always be somebody near the telephone. I had done that duty many times.

  While waiting to try again, I made my good-byes to Mathew, who was surprised by my departure. “You fixed your motor?” I assured him that experienced sailors didn’t need engines. “When do you sail?” I told him on the turn of the tide, wished him farewell, got his address to send him a postcard, and tried to call home again, again with no answer. Nor was there any answer an hour later, when it was time to sail. In order to get the news to Mother that we were leaving, and were bringing her the money in cash, I had to give the message to Mathew, who promised to keep calling until somebody answered the phone. “Good luck!” he waved to me.

  The breeze veered westerly, clearing the clouds late in the day. Merry nosed away from the dock and into Boston Harbor with a dip of her colours to Constitution. “Right there, where she is now,” the captain commented, “is where the old ferry dock was, long before the bridge, and that’s just exactly where they hanged the seven men they got hold of from Bellamy’s crew. Remember Bellamy?” I did, and then turned my eyes toward Boston, framed against the late-day sun, saying a silent good-bye to it. “They also hung ’em on that side,” said the captain, following my gaze, “right there under Copp’s Hill. Like poor old John Quelch in 1704, and William Fly and a cou
ple of his people, around 1726. So now, instead of a bunch of bodies decorating the harbour, a sailor gets smokestacks, steel cranes, and fuel tanks. And some pretty big buildings starting to grow.” He gazed at it in a melancholy kind of way. “Dear old town, what will you ever look like the next time I see you?” Again he brushed a tear.

  “It’s the smog,” he said.

  17

  Off the Graves

  AT SUNSET, THE great port sparkled in Merry’s slow wake. With barely enough breeze to fill her sails, she ghosted east, skirting the shipping channel through a maze of flashing navigational markers, blinking buoys, and fast-moving lights of water traffic. In this galaxy, our little oil lights with their perfectly trimmed wicks were insignificant. To make Merry more visible to the modern world, the captain brought up pieces of a huge radar reflector, a thin metal thing of many facets, and assembled it.

  “Quite often it’s best to be invisible, but it’s very important not to get hit by big ships. This contraption gives a radar signature like an ocean liner, “ he said, hoisting it opposite our regular little reflector, which he also left up. The result was that all the vessels around us gave Merry a lot of room, which was a good thing, because all night we barely had enough breeze to keep steerageway. “We’ll get some wind in the morning,” he predicted.

  This time he was wrong. Saturday dawned clear and windless. Merry was totally becalmed, just clear of Boston’s outermost shoal, “The Graves,” as it was called gloomily on the chart. There we anchored in order to hold our ground against an adverse tide, and the captain turned in, leaving me on watch.