I didn’t even look around. I opened up wide so that the Ursula pushed ahead as hard as she could, and I swung the tiller a little, trying to keep my distance but figuring to head into shallow water where we couldn’t be followed. The searchlight swung over us once or twice more, and then steadied down and fixed on us like a long, shiny pin sticking into a bug. And from the angle of it I could tell the chaser was inching up on the starboard side, working in between us and landward to keep us away from it, and knowing if we tried to head out to sea he had us sure because we’d run out of gas that way. Then I couldn’t help looking, even with that light full in my face so that I had to shade my eyes against it, and at first I couldn’t see anything, and then I did see it coming out of the mist like a shadow and then sharp and clear, a destroyer with the black smoke boiling out of her stacks, and men running forward, and a couple of them pulling the jacket off the one-pounder gun there. And while I was looking, an officer on the bridge put a megaphone to his mouth and hailed us, and my heart went down like lead. Up to then I knew what I was seeing but I couldn’t believe it. Not deep down I couldn’t. But when I heard that hail, it came through to me. It sounded like the Last Trump, and I froze to the tiller when I heard it.
That was when Willie Boy grabbed the tiller and shoved me away from it. “What the hell are you standing there for?” he yelled. “Get on that pump, you dummy. Get on that pump and work it!”
“What for?” I said. “We ain’t shipping water. And we can’t outrun that thing loaded down this way.” And all that with the destroyer bearing down on us, and the officer yelling his head off through the megaphone to heave to, and that big gun swiveling our way.
“Get on that pump!” said Willie Boy, and I started to, but before I got to it he shoved the tiller over so hard I almost fell flat. The Ursula turned, heeling and shipping plenty of water now, and then she ran right along the trough of the seas while I pumped hard as I could and Willie Boy hung on to the tiller, trying to get us around the rest of the way seaward. It was something to watch the way he handled that boat. We rode up a comber, the Ursula yawing like a crazy thing, and then she came around and headed straight for the destroyer. There was no time for the destroyer to change course even one notch. We drove right at her and past her bow and along her whole length at full speed, so close I could have reached out and touched her plates with my hand when we went by, and I could hear the men on deck yelling down at me. Then we were in her wake and headed fast the other way, but the searchlight swung around after us, and I knew from the way the destroyer started to come about that she wasn’t giving up so easy. In the middle of the turn she fell out of sight in the mist, so I thought for sure that Willie Boy would head for shore now and we would lay low in shallow water. The one bad thing was that the destroyer might send out small boats to search up and down for us, but I figured it was a chance we’d have to take.
I was wrong about that. Without saying a word to let me know what he was up to, Willie Boy swung the tiller hard over again so that the Ursula would be finishing an S turn and heading right back on the course to New York. As long as our gas held out he could try that kind of trick, because the Ursula could turn ten times sharper than the destroyer, and any time the destroyer showed it was coming about we could head the other way again. It was too big a ship to be chasing anything as small as us in the first place.
But Willie Boy should have told me. This way, all I knew was that the Ursula suddenly heaved up under me and lifted so fast that I could tell we were hit by a wave as big as a mountain. I felt the water closing over me and pulling me up, and then the green of water in my eyes got lighter so that I knew the wave had gone by, but when I set my feet down on the deck again it wasn’t there. There was nothing but a mile of water under me, and I went down choking on it and swallowing it and feeling the ice cold of it cut into me like a million knives.
I was scared then. So scared I lost my head for good and didn’t even think of getting out of my coat and the boots that were weighting me down. All I could think of was Fred Duane and the way he said I’d end up like this, and all I could feel aside of being scared to die was hate for him because he wished this on me by saying it.
Then I broke surface, kicking and paddling like a dog in a mill-stream. I didn’t expect to see the Ursula there when I sang out for her. I was sure that if she hadn’t been sunk by the wave, Willie Boy would take care of her rather than me. But she was there. As soon as I went overboard he must have cut down the motor and headed for me, and the next minute he had me by the hair and then by the coat collar so I could be pulled on board, and I lay there with all those knives sticking me, and my teeth chattering so I couldn’t stop them, and the smell and taste of salt water in my nose and mouth. Then I got on my knees and pulled the tarpaulin off those bottles. I could have drunk a whole bottle that minute without taking breath.
Before I could get a bottle out Willie Boy said, “Heave that sack overboard! Dump those things overboard as fast as you can.”
“I’m dying of cold,” I told him. “One drink won’t hurt.”
“You goddam fool,” he said. “The pump’s busted, and look at the shape we’re in! Get this load overboard or you’ll drown for keeps this time.”
Then I got my wits about me and saw the shape we were in. The boat was knee-deep in water, and she rode so sluggish that every time we went up a swell and down the other side you’d think we’d keep going all the way to the bottom. Willie Boy had the motor hardly turning over, just enough to keep the stern to the swells, but it wasn’t much help. The stern was too low already and we kept shipping water over it. So he was right about getting the load overboard. You couldn’t bail by hand as fast as the water was coming in, but every one of those sacks cleared out of the boat would bring her that much higher in the water.
I started pitching them out, using both hands, and Willie Boy said, “Easy, easy, goddam it,” and pointed his finger to show me the destroyer’s light, pale and watery in the mist, but still poking this way and that. Whoever ran that ship knew his business. He was lying close by and due north now, right between us and the shore, and he wasn’t giving up. He figured we might still be around, and as soon as he heard our motor pick up he would be on us like a cat on a mouse. So I tried to put the bottles overboard without too much of a splash, and I found that hard work is near as good as liquor for warming up a man. By the time I had pretty well cleared the boat I was running a sweat even inside my wet clothes. We weren’t shipping any more water then, but we were still knee-deep in it, and Willie Boy let me spell him at the tiller while he used a bucket to bail out some. Then we just sat there looking at each other with that searchlight moving around and around and the horn on the destroyer whooping off now and then to let us know we were still in trouble.
“What the hell,” said Willie Boy. “We’ll wait him out.”
“Can’t wait him out long with the motor turning over,” I said. “We don’t have that much gas.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “What do you want me to do, cut the motor and drift right into that frigging battleship? A four piper, for Christ sake! A destroyer chasing down a lousy dory. Next Sunday they’ll have the Marines out in the park to make sure nobody’s fooling around in the bushes.” He picked up a piece of waste rag and flung it at me. “You goddam farmer, if it wasn’t for you we’d be out of here by now. You don’t belong in a boat, you ought to be picking potatoes. I should have let you drown.”
“Maybe so,” I said, “but long as you didn’t I’m much beholden to you.”
“For what? Why, you dummy, I’d have done the same for a cat in a sewer. I’m weak-minded that way. You don’t owe me anything for being weak-minded except a kick in the tail. Here, have your drink now. You look like you could use it.”
He opened up two of the bottles we had left and gave me one for myself. It was fine French brandy, and it went down so smooth you couldn’t feel it until it settled in your belly. We kept drinking away, the first time we ever
did that on the job, and even with that searchlight moving around and the horn whooping I felt better.
“Five thousand dollars’ worth of stuff gone to the bottom,” Willie Boy said. “Frigging Coast Guard. And all farm boys like you. Down from the hills to join the Coast Guard because they get a free pair of shoes that way, and they never had on shoes before. And their daddies say, ‘Good-bye, son, do a good job for your old Uncle Sam,’ and then go back to making booze in the family still. Goddam farmers are crazy about Prohibition. Stop Prohibition and they’d have to quit making moonshine and starve to death.” Then he started laughing. “You see the look on their faces when we ran by them?”
“Well,” I said, “it was a mighty pretty trick. I guess they never did see it before.”
“And politicians,” he said. “Ah, Jesus, give me the chance and I’d be in politics so fast you wouldn’t be able to see my smoke. I’d sit in that little old backroom drinking out of my bottle with one hand and signing laws against it with the other and collecting from one and all. Honest Willie they’d call me, and I’d ream ’em one and all. You know how many thirsty politicians there’ll be now with all our stuff gone to the bottom like that?”
“That the kind of people your man deals with?” I said. “Only politicians?”
“He deals with the best. Politicians, bankers, brokers, and the cream of high society. Only the best. Any thief with money is on the select list.”
“Maybe so,” I said, “but there’s honest people around like a drink now and then, too.”
“Name one.”
“Me,” I said.
“All right,” said Willie Boy, “we’ll drink to that,” and we did, a long drink bottoms up. And then he said, “And you know why you’re honest? Because you’re slow, kiddo. So help me Jesus, you’re the slowest alive man I ever met. That’s what I hate about you. You think slow and you talk slow and you move slow, and some day I’m going to pull out this gun and start shooting at you just to watch you make some speed for once. A turtle is honest, too, and what does it get him? You’re the human turtle, you drunk clamdigger, and I’m the one to teach you how to move fast. You see in the papers about that man flew an airplane two hundred forty miles an hour? You know what that must feel like?”
“Maybe not,” I said. “Do you?”
“Oh, I was up there once chasing the gulls around. And next week you and I’ll go over to the flying field and try it together. That’ll teach you how to make speed. Day by day in every way you’ll get better and better until, hell, you’re well. You leave it to me, kiddo.” And then for all he was half drunk and not even seeming to take notice, he put his hand back of his ear and said, “Is that the government going away?”
I listened, and sure enough I heard the destroyer’s engines starting to thump hard and smelled the smoke from her stacks blowing windward into my face. Then I could tell she was moving away from us. The smoke cleared and the searchlight got paler and paler until it was gone and finally you couldn’t hear the engines at all. So we were out of trouble, but a long way from New York and not enough gas to get us there.
When I told that to Willie Boy he said, “Where do you figure we are?”
“Couple of miles off Fire Island Light, I reckon.”
“You think we can get from here to that clamdigging dock of yours on the gas we’ve got?”
“You mean Tippietown?”
“That’s what I mean. We’ll head in there and trade the few bottles we’ve got left for some gas and dry clothes and maybe a couple of beds with women in them, and then tomorrow we’ll run back to town. You think you can find us a couple of pretty girls around those clam flats?”
“Well,” I told him, “maybe not so pretty, but sure enough willing.”
And next day back in New York he had to admit that was the truth.
SIX
But that was the day our luck ran out on us and was gone. And it was gone because Willie Boy set himself up high and mighty and talked against it, and because I was an unbeliever fallen to Satan. My soul was shrunk and shriveled and rotted with ignorance so that I was glad I was saved from drowning and that we had made a landing without getting caught and put in jail. I didn’t know that the Book was opening for me then and there to show me how Satan and the Lord had wrestled for me and Satan had me tight. I didn’t know I was only saved because drowning would have been the bargain price to pay for my sins, and it wasn’t enough. So the Book opened wide, and a fiery sword with my name on it in fiery letters came down and pointed at what it said.
And it said, For the time is at hand.
But Satan held me tight in his fist with his fingers coiled like slimy snakes around me, and he turned me away so I couldn’t read it.
And it said, And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
But I did not look.
And Satan bided his time, and when the time came he set me down in the Ursula alongside Willie Boy and he aimed us on our course.
And we never ran a truer course to the Anglesey than that one.
SEVEN
I didn’t know about the trouble in the wind when I went on board. There was Nickles same as always, dressed up in his fine clothes and derby hat and with that big sheepskin on and a cigar in his mouth like a hog done up for the circus, and there were men up and down the deck, some of them working but most of them idling around half drunk. It looked the way it always did when I was there, and I didn’t even give a thought to how quiet it got when I walked over to Nickles, and to the way the men who were working stopped to watch me. All it meant to me was that they were a shiftless crew, the lot of them, and any excuse to lay off the job was excuse enough for them.
Then I gave the money to Nickles, a roll of it as big as your fist, and I told him what stock we wanted. And he looked at me in a funny way out of those pig eyes of his. “Ah,” he said, soft and gentle, “that’s the same order as last time. Same exact order, isn’t it?”
“What about it?” I said. “What difference does it make?”
“None,” said Nickles smooth as could be. “None at all. Except to make things come out even all around. Nothing like having the books balance, mister,” and he opened the roll and started counting through it.
That’s when I first smelled the trouble. It wasn’t only what he said, although it wasn’t like him to say something nonsensical for the sake of talk. But it was the way the quiet came through to me now. And the way the men along the deck stood watching me, except a couple of them that came drifting up close. Two of the Limeys they were, Shires and Coe, and a pair of mean-looking brutes they were, standing so near that I could have counted the snaggle-teeth in their heads while they were grinning at me. And the captain himself walking up slow and thoughtful like a man with other things on his mind but willing to stop and pass the time of day. Ingoldsby was his name and he had the face of an old schoolteacher gone to pot. A long face with a white stubble of whiskers always on it, and with bloodshot eyes and black bags hanging under them like a sad hound dog. And with his blue jacket always foul with dirt and drippings so he didn’t look fit to command even a tub like the Anglesey. He was there, too, and the pair of Limeys close by, and the rest of the crew not making a sound but waiting for something to happen. I could feel that, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it except stand there and watch Nickles count through the money.
Finally he was done. He rolled up the money tight again and shoved it into the pocket of the sheepskin. “Well,” he said, “it’s all there.”
“No reason it shouldn’t be,” I told him. “Now maybe we can get going.”
He patted the pocket where the money was. “All there,” he said. “Five thousand, mister, and it balances the books right down to the last bloody cent. That’s how I like it. Everything coming out even all around, the account closed, and no fuss and worry about it. And no hard feelings. There’s no place for hard feelings in business. Right, Captain?”
> “Right as rain,” said Ingoldsby, and I could tell that both of them were trying to make a fool of me, but I couldn’t yet tell how.
“I got no argument with any of that,” I said. “Now how about that load of liquor? I’d like to get it aboard and out of here before the weather sours.”
“And that’s what I’m telling you,” said Nickles. “The account is closed. You’ve got all the load you’re getting, mister, and the best way to beat the weather is by getting the hell out of here as fast as you can. Down the side and shove off fast is how I read the signs.”
I didn’t move one way or the other. I didn’t go down the ladder because I wasn’t the kind to get robbed and let it go at that, and I didn’t go for Nickles because I could see that Shires and Coe were just waiting for me to try it. They were so close now that I could smell them, and they were still grinning like monkeys looking for trouble.
So I said to Nickles, “Seems to me you’re wasting your wind telling me all this. Willie Boy’s the boss of the outfit. He’s the one’s got to be told.”
“Then get him up here and I’ll tell him,” said Nickles. “I’ve got wind enough for that, mister. Don’t you worry about me.”
I hated to turn my back on him, but I leaned over the rail and hailed Willie Boy. He was standing in the Ursula right below and trying to fend her off from the Anglesey with the stump of an oar. Anybody else would have hung rubber tires around the Ursula for bumpers but he wouldn’t. Still and all, when he heard what I was trying to tell him he put down the oar and came up the side in a hurry. He was a quick-minded man. He stopped short when he saw the way everybody was standing there and then he laughed. “What a reception committee,” he said. “Damned if it don’t look like the zoo.”
The Winter After This Summer Page 31