Then Fred Duane took notice of me and came over to ask what I wanted.
“Nothing,” I said. “You need money for what I want, and I’ve got no money left on me.”
“Ah,” he said, “you know your credit’s good here,” and went and brought me a beer. But no matter how much my mouth watered for it I wouldn’t touch it, being the kind who liked to pay his own way. I pushed it aside, and Fred Duane looked at it and looked at me, his lips sucking in and out the way they did whenever he was thinking something deep. Then he sat down next to me.
“What’s eating you?” he said.
So knowing he was always kindly disposed to me and had the same feeling about the old lady that I did, I told him my troubles and what I had done about them. He took it all in, shaking his head up and down to show he understood, and then he said, “That’s all well and good, but, far as I can see, it leaves you without any boat to make a living from or any place to put your head at night. That’s a flighty way to do things, boy. Maybe you ought to go back home and try again.”
“No,” I said. “I’m done there.”
“And what’ll you do about making money, since you’re too fine to beg it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I wished he would take away the glass of beer altogether, the way the sight of it tormented me. “I’ll move along and find something. I’m strong and willing.”
“Are you?”
“I am.”
“And close-mouthed?” said Fred Duane with his lips sucking in and out in a way that told me he was circling around something, wondering whether to come to roost on it.
“And close-mouthed, too.”
“Ah, that’s a good thing to be nowadays,” said Fred Duane. “And you’re honest, too. I never knew any Avery wasn’t damn-fool honest. It’s something that’s nice to meet in other people,” and laughed as if it was a great joke.
I didn’t feel like laughing along with him. “I’m all those things,” I said. “Why? Don’t you think there’s someone’ll pay me for what I can offer him?”
“No, I know someone’ll pay you plenty.”
“Who?”
“Me,” said Fred Duane. “I can use a man like you. What do you make from clamming now?”
“Eighteen a week, maybe twenty a week.”
“Well, I’ll pay you twenty-five a week,” said Fred Duane, “for being strong, willing, close-mouthed, and honest six days a week. Do you want it?”
I wanted it and I took it. And I made sure that Fred Duane would never have cause to be sorry for treating me so square as long as I worked for him.
As it turned out, I was working for him and O. P. Smith at one and the same time, because they had gone into business together, doubling up in clams and bootleg liquor. Up to that time O. P. Smith just had one big truck working for him. Every night when all the clams were barreled they would be loaded on the truck and taken into New York where he had a place in Fulton Fish Market right near Brooklyn Bridge. Then with the need for good liquor and the way Fred Duane had it brought in by boat from Rum Row offshore, they set up a deal where O. P. Smith would get another truck, and the two trucks would be able to take the full load of clams and a load of liquor into town without anybody the wiser.
My job was to handle the loading and driving of one of the trucks with Calvin Duane, Fred’s brother, along to help. Calvin was the sickly sort, given mostly to talk and smoking cigarettes, but even so it was easier work for me than handling the tongs and rake on the old clamming boat. Daytimes I would work on the truck motor to make sure it was running smooth as silk, and then after dark I would run it up to O. P. Smith’s loading platform and roll the barrels onto it. The first barrels were full of straw and bottled liquor, and they would go in right behind the cab of the truck. Then the barrels of clams would go on top of them and in back of them until the truck was full, so that anybody poking around would think it was all clams.
Once we got going there were no stops from there into the city, so it didn’t take long. Fred Duane had made sure to buy off the cops along the way which meant that none of them bothered us, but he was worried about hijackers who showed up now and then to grab a load, knowing there wasn’t anything you could do about it. Best thing, he said, was to keep rolling fast, and if trouble showed up to try and outrun it. But no guns, he said, and no fighting. If it came to that, it was better to have the load stolen than to have some kind of fuss that would bring trouble down on him.
Once we got the truck to Fulton Fish Market we’d back it into O. P. Smith’s place there and unload it, the clams out on the platform for storekeepers and restaurant people to buy next morning, and the liquor taken inside to a storeroom where there were always some hard-looking men hanging around to do business. They all had the same cut to their jib, dressed too good for what they were and where they were, and talking New York style out of the corners of their mouths. And, like as not, the kind that would cut your throat for a nickel and their mother’s throat for a dime or even the promise of it. So except for one of them I was glad enough to tend to my own business and steer clear of the lot, pulling the truck out as soon as it was unloaded and getting back to Tippietown every day around sunrise.
The one that was different from the rest was so different that you couldn’t help but take notice of him. He was a smart-looking young fellow with mischief all over him and a way of laughing at everybody and everything. It was all a joke to him, whatever was going on, and even when that got the others heated up it didn’t stop him. Willie Boy was the name he was called and Willie Boy was the name he answered to, although he looked to be a couple of years older than me.
And he dressed different from the others. They were what you’d expect from gutter scum with new-found money in their pockets to burn, always done up in fancy clothes and shoes with a high shine on them, and always fussy about it so that they handled the barrels of liquor like old ladies getting out their best china for a church tea. But he was different. For all he was a long cut above them, being good-natured and well-spoken, he always wore an old pea jacket and some kind of seagoing officer’s cap with the gold braid on it so tarnished you could hardly see it. And he handled the barrels like a man, too, not afraid to put his back into it when he lifted and heaved them. And making fun of the others for their lady fingers and their fear they’d get a speck of dust on their pointy shoes. They didn’t like that, and would curse him and call him dirty names for it, but never do more than that. He wasn’t the man you’d pick a fight with for the fun of it. There was sort of a happy craziness in his eye that let you know right off he’d be only too glad to fight you for money or marbles and to kick in your teeth while doing it. Or use the gun on you that he kept shoved into his belt all the time.
He was the only one of the lot I talked to, and that came about because he started it, sitting down beside me one night when I was taking a rest, and saying to me that Calvin Duane told him I knew all about boats and was that true.
“Depends on the kind of boats,” I said. “What kind do you mean?”
“Oh, the kind that can run The Gully out past Sandy Hook Light and Ambrose Light to about fifteen or twenty miles off Long Island.”
“I was done sucking tit a long time ago,” I told him. “You can say Rum Row if that’s what you mean.”
He laughed. “That’s what I mean.”
“And the kind of boat you mean is something that can take a bankroll one way and bring back a load of liquor the other. Ain’t that so?”
“Say,” he said, “you know you’re a regular little mind reader?”
“There’s some minds that’s easy to read,” I said to him right back. “Only I’m surprised that anybody wears a Navy cap on top of his don’t have more sense than to talk about running past Sandy Hook and Ambrose. The Coast Guard’s thick as thieves around those parts. They’ll be onto you in no time.”
“Not with the kind of boat I’m talking about.”
“Why?” I said. “You got something that can do
better than fifteen knots going and ten coming?”
“Maybe I have,” he said, and patted me on the shoulder, friendly like. “That wiped the stuffed-moose look off your face, didn’t it? You look almost alive now, you goddam clamdigger. How come a salt-water man like you took to driving a truck anyhow?”
“I do what I’m paid for,” I said. “And I don’t notice you taking soundings in deep water for all your clothes. What kind of cap is that? It ain’t from our Navy.”
“It’s British Navy. I was admiral of a PT boat, kiddo, and I can tell you the name of every sea gull in the English Channel from the shape of its shit. It’s a great place to have a war, the English Channel, and I’m the one who knows it. I’m a British admiral, you ape, and if you’re one of those Irish gets hot in the neck when they see the King’s picture in the Sunday paper, don’t let on about it. I’m a King lover from way back. He gave me all the wine, women, and fast action I could ask for, and I’m a royal arse-kisser for keeps now. What do you think of that?”
“It’s your business,” I said. “And I ain’t Irish to start with. I’m Yankee. Long Island Yankee.”
“And I’m Long Island Dutch, so we can shake hands on it. Willie’s the name. Willie Boy to my father and friends, so if you’re a friend of mine you can call me that. Are you a friend of mine?”
“Maybe so.”
“All right, then shake. And you’re Mike Avery out of Tippietown, a dumb Yankee with clams in his shoes and hair growing out of his ears. Right?”
“Maybe so. But what kind of boat you got that can make better than ten knots loaded?”
“Ah,” he said, “no kind of boat yet. But the boat’s the easy part. What I’ve got now is the motor. The motor,” he said, and he kissed his fingers at me. “You never saw a motor like this, you barnacled son of a bitch. Nobody around here’s seen a motor like this. It’s something I picked up in England and had shipped over for a souvenir. A sailor’s got to have a souvenir, kid. It just takes a smart sailor to know the right souvenir when he sees it.”
“What kind of motor is it?” I asked him, and felt ashamed for itching so much to know.
“Never you mind,” he said, and started snapping his fingers and singing it to himself under his breath like a little song. “Oh, she’s my little flapper girl,” he sang like that. “Oh, she’s the prettiest little pile of iron in old New York,” making it sound like some kind of jazz music and looking at me out of the corners of his eyes all the while so that I felt he was making a fool of me. Yet, I didn’t get riled because I could see he didn’t mean any harm by it. He was just so lively and full of fun that he couldn’t help acting up the way he did.
I said, “Willie Boy, maybe you got something special that can outrun any Coast Guard boat in the water. Just the same, you figure to take bearings by all the lights off Long Island, you ain’t getting a chance to run away from something; you’ll be heading right into it. You listen to what I say. Maybe I got hair growing out of my ears, but I know those waters.”
“How well do you know them?”
“I know them just fine.”
All of a sudden he stopped fooling around. He reached inside the pea jacket and came out with a folded-up paper. When he opened it and laid it out on the floor in front of me I saw it was a chart of the waters off Long Island. He said, “You know enough to lay a course from Romer Shoals out to the fleet without going through the Coast Guard? What kind of bearings would you have to go by?”
“Bearings?” I said. “What bearings? You set me down there in a fog with a blindfold on, and I’ll tell you where I am from the smell of the water.”
I could see he doubted me. “Smell of the clams you mean,” he said.
“They don’t grow clams in deep water,” I said. “And for all of that, there ain’t a clammer out of Tippietown don’t know his way around deep water. I’m no better than the rest.”
“Oh, maybe a little better,” he said, and poked me in the ribs with his elbow. “Maybe you’re the man I need for a job I’m thinking about.”
“I’ve got a job,” I told him. I folded up the chart and put it in his hand. “I’ve got all the job I need. I’m not looking for one where some crazy Coast Guard boy figures to get a medal by shooting off a gun at me. I got no use for being shot at. Prohibition’s fine for me just the way it is.”
“You got nothing, you goddam, big-nosed clamdigger,” said Willie Boy. “You don’t have a pot. How much money are you getting right now?”
“Twenty-five a week,” said I.
“Twenty-five a week!” he said, and he whistled between his teeth making believe to be surprised. “Ah, you’re rich!” he said. “I should have known, I should have known. What would anybody with your kind of money want with fifty a week, or maybe a hundred a week? I ask you like an admiral to a ship’s monkey what it could possibly mean to you.”
I didn’t want to think about it, but I couldn’t help it, the way he made it sound. Still and all, the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. Running a contact boat out to Rum Row was a rough job, a mite too dangerous for any man with some brains in his head, and, anyhow, I couldn’t see walking out on Fred Duane when I was so beholden to him. So I shook my head and kept shaking it even when Willie Boy talked about how it would be a hundred a week sure, never less than that and maybe more.
Finally, when he saw I meant it he stood up and looked down on me with a big smile.
“You’ll change your mind,” he said. “You’ll come around.”
“Not I,” I told him, and I was never so sure of anything as when I said that, all the while looking at that big gun stuck in his belt.
FOUR
But he was right and I was wrong, and I came to see that the night Calvin Duane and I had trouble with the hijackers. It was Calvin Duane first saw the car following us, Calvin being a scared kind of creature with his eyes always going this way and that, looking out of the windows and then into the mirror to see what was behind, and much like a rabbit with his head stuck up out of its hole wondering if it was all right to go hop somewheres. And smoking one cigarette after another, taking just a puff or two of each and then heaving most of it out of the window as if it wasn’t costing him good money for all he wasted.
Because he was like that I didn’t take too much stock in all his fits and starts and worries, but this time I knew he was right.
“That car’s following us,” he said, never taking his eyes off the mirror. “I don’t like the looks of that car.”
It was a big black Packard sedan with its headlights bright, and it was trailing us a fair distance behind. I speeded up a little and the Packard kept the same distance between us. Then I slowed down some and that was the bad time, because the Packard slowed down, too, never making a move to pass us.
Calvin Duane looked like he was ready to drop dead of fright. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, “there’s going to be trouble. Oh, God almighty, there’s going to be trouble just the way I always knew. Get going, you fool. Get your foot down on that gas and push. Oh, Jesus, I wish my son of a bitch brother was here to see what it was like. I’ll kill him if I ever get out of this alive. I’ll tell him where to head in.”
It was a joke trying to push the truck faster than that Packard, but I done my best. We went through Rockville Centre so fast that I had to fight the wheel making the turn onto the westbound road into New York, but when we were clear of town I saw the headlights behind me right where they were before. Then they started to move up alongside the truck, and when Calvin Duane saw that, he grabbed at my arm.
“It’s no use,” he said. “You pull up and let them take what they want. I got a family home, do you hear? I got a family home. You let them take what they want and don’t you make trouble.”
That was in my mind, too, and that’s what I would have done except that something happened then that there wasn’t any call to happen. The Packard saw me slowing down, but it wasn’t enough for him. He started to cut across me to force me off the road, and
then a man leaned out of the back window and pointed a shotgun at me. Pointed a shotgun right at my head not five foot away, and there wasn’t any call to do that no matter what.
It was that set me off somehow. I didn’t even think what was smart and what wasn’t. I slowed down for one more second so that the Packard was ahead of me, and then I jammed down hard on the gas and slewed into it just behind the hood. It made a crash to wake the dead, but the truck could take it and the Packard couldn’t. It skidded to a dead stop in the middle of the road, and the truck bounced away almost over the shoulder of the road. I got it straightened out and headed right, but not before that gun went off behind me, some of the shot ripping into the canvas over the load of barrels and a couple of them whining by my head like hornets and taking the glass right out of the mirror on the way.
Then we were off down the road full speed, and I saw that all that time Calvin Duane had been grabbing hold of my arm. He didn’t even know that himself, because when I shook him off he looked down at his own hand as if he was surprised to see it there.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said, “we went and got away with it.” Then he started laughing like a fool. “I wish Fred was here to see it,” he said. “We were dead pigeons and we got up and flew away. Oh, flap, flap, we flew away. You know how much is left of that car back there? You know how many trucks ever got through once they got held up like that? Oh, Jesus, that gun looked like a cannon, didn’t it? But bang, bang, and the pigeon flew away. You hear that thing go bang in your ear?”
That was the thing. I heard it and I saw it, and what kept turning around in my mind was the idea that if it was going to be guns and shooting now, it wouldn’t make much difference if it was on land or water. A gun is a gun, and when it goes off at you, the least thing that matters is whether it’s a hijacker shooting it or a Coast Guard man. What it came down to was, if I was getting paid to be shot at, I ought to get paid the kind of money Willie Boy talked about.
The Winter After This Summer Page 29