“That’s very funny,” said Nickles. “You ought to try it in a vaudeville turn. You’ve got a talent in that direction.”
“Oh, I’ve got a lot of talents,” Willie Boy said, and Nickles said, “Yes, I know that. Now if you’re finished with ship’s inspection do you want to talk business? And I mean business without fuss or excitement, because I’m not the sort who looks for fuss and excitement. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen what can happen to a young cockaroo that crows too loud at the wrong time, if you know what I mean.”
Willie Boy leaned back against the bulwark with his elbows resting on it, and he didn’t look any more worried about things than Nickles. “I know what you mean, you mealy-mouthed pirate,” he said, “and you know what I mean. You’ve got five thousand dollars of my money, and either I get value for it or I get the money back. That’s an easy choice. Shouldn’t take you more than ten seconds to make your mind up about it, but we’re old friends, Monty, we’re old wartime buddies, so I’ll give you twenty.”
He took out a cigarette, and Nickles held out his cigar to him to get a light from and waited until the cigarette was lit. Then Nickles said, “Well, there’s choices and choices. A man we know—no need to mention names—told me that money is his. And told me that if I ever came across it, one way or another, he’d take it kindly if I returned it to him. Now, how do you think he’d feel about all this?”
“Is that what it’s about?” said Willie Boy.
“That’s what it’s about.”
“Well,” said Willie Boy, “it makes more sense than your trying to be Captain Kidd in your old age, Monty. You’ve got the disposition to be Captain Kidd, you tub of lard, but you don’t have the shape for it. Anyhow, it makes the choice that much easier. The gent you’re talking about happens to be the silent partner in this company and I’m the noisy one. And I’m the one right here telling you to fork over that money, Monty.”
“As far as that goes,” said Nickles, “I was told there wasn’t any more partnership.”
“I wasn’t,” said Willie Boy.
“No more partnership,” Nickles said, and he took the cigar out of his mouth and pointed the wet, chewed-up end of it at Ingoldsby. “Am I right, Captain?”
“You are,” said Ingoldsby, and Willie Boy gave him a look.
“You’re another,” he said, “you frigging monkey on a stick.” And then he said to Nickles, “Well, that settles everything, doesn’t it? Give me my money, and when the man asks you about it tell him I withdrew my share in the partnership. Come on, Monty, let’s quit fooling around.”
He held out his hand but Nickles only shook his head in a sad kind of way. “I can’t see it,” he said. “It would be a swindle if I did.”
Willie Boy slipped the gun out of his belt and pointed it at Nickles. “Now do you see it?”
The sight of that thing pointing at Nickles’ big belly a foot away was enough to make my skin crawl, and I saw that Shires and Coe didn’t like it either. But the captain looked sleepy as ever, and as for Nickles, you got the feeling it didn’t mean anything to him at all.
“Ah,” he said, “that’s how it goes. First a swindle and then a robbery and then God knows what afterward. That’s how it is since the war. There’s no more business being done. There’s only swindles and robberies.”
Willie Boy kept the gun pointed at him. “You’re all right, Monty,” he said. “You’re a great little talker. I’ve seen you talk your way out of bad ones before—a couple of times in London and once in Brighton, wasn’t it?—but you’ve never tried it with me. Don’t do it now. Just give me that money.”
“I’m a businessman,” Nickles said. “I don’t do business with a gun at my head. Put that silly thing away and act your age.” And then he said to Ingoldsby, “Is there some place we can settle this in private? Is the galley empty?”
“It should be,” Ingoldsby said.
“All right then,” Nickles said to Willie Boy, “if you want to settle this without fuss and excitement, let’s do it. I’m reasonable. I’m willing to listen to an argument if it makes sense,” and like that he turned and walked off so that Willie Boy was left there holding the gun and not knowing what to do about it. Then he followed after Nickles, close on his heels, and like a magnet those two pulled the rest of us along, Captain Ingoldsby and me and Shires and Coe, so that we all tagged after Nickles across the deck and down a companionway and into the galley. And when we got there I was glad enough to hear the captain tell Shires and Coe, “You men lay out there in the passage. This is private business, you understand? I don’t want anybody’s ears poked in that door,” because I couldn’t much more stomach the grins on their ugly faces.
The galley was as foul as the rest of the ship, everything dirty and greasy, and a nest of cockroaches stirring around the drain on the floor and others running around wherever you looked. Not that they bothered Ingoldsby. There was a pot of coffee on the stove, and when he said, “Anybody want a mug of this?” and nobody said anything he helped himself and tore off a piece of bread from a loaf on the table and sat on the table stuffing his mouth.
Nickles was too short and fat to hoist himself onto the table. He sat down on the cook’s stool and opened up the sheepskin and took off the derby hat and fanned himself with it. And Willie Boy leaned back against the bulkhead holding the gun on him, and I gave them all whatever room they wanted.
“Well,” Nickles said to Willie Boy, “you look the fine bloody fool with that thing in your hand. Go on, put it away. Anybody that talks to me holding a gun in his hand might as well stuff wax in my ears. You’ve got me where you want me, so put it away and let’s talk like businessmen.”
Willie Boy took his time about it, then shoved the gun back into his belt. But he stuck his thumbs into the belt on each side of it, the way he had of doing, so his hands were close to the gun.
“What makes you think you’ve got any claim on that money, Monty?” he said.
“Ah,” said Nickles, “I don’t. I never said I did. But I was informed by our friend that you helped yourself to five thousand dollars of his last week, and if I ever had the chance to lay my hands on any part of it I was to return it to him. I’m only an agent in the matter. You can’t blame me for doing what I’m kindly advised to do, can you?”
“Why, God damn it,” said Willie Boy, “I told him what happened. We were run down by the government and had to dump the load. What am I supposed to do, run all the risks and then pay him back if I lose out?”
“Lose out?” said Nickles. He took the roll of money out of his pocket and dropped it into his derby hat and rolled it around and around in front of Willie Boy like dice in a box. “If you lost out, where did that come from?”
“What’s that to you?” Willie Boy said. “I begged, borrowed, and stole it. What do you care where it comes from, you bastard?”
“Ah, that’s the question,” said Nickles. “That’s touching on a very delicate point. Our mutual friend seems to think that you let your humorous side get the best of you. He seems to think that you landed five thousand dollars’ worth of his bottled goods somewhere on Long Island and set up shop for yourself. And I don’t have to tell you that when he gets an idea, it’s hard to shake out of him. And ten times harder if he’s been told what happened by some people who saw it with their own bloody eyes. Oh, he can be a stubborn bugger when he’s got cause. He didn’t get where he is by being the la-de-da laddie.”
“You’re a liar, Monty,” said Willie Boy, and he laid a hand on the gun and with the other hand he reached into the derby hat and took the money. “You look like a toad, Monty, and you lie like a snake. When I told the man what happened he never blinked an eye. Would I come back to this stinking tub if I double-crossed him? There’s twenty other ships on the Row I can do business with.”
“Not cut-rate business,” said Nickles. “Not real business. Rum-running that’d be. Taking what you can get and paying through the nose for it. But I’ll admit you’ve come up
with a small argument in your favor. A very small one. The fact that you picked us to do business with after what happened could mean that you’re a bit of an honest man or a lot of fool. And you always were a fool in some ways, Willie. Always at your games. But if you want to be wise for a turn you’ll let me hold on to that money until you settle matters with the man.”
“Not a chance, Monty,” said Willie Boy, and then Nickles dropped the derby hat out of his hand and when it hit the deck I had a crazy notion in that second that it blew up in my face. There was a bang in my ear and a cloud of smoke around me, and I saw Willie Boy flatten back against the bulkhead as if he was nailed to it and then fall down.
But it wasn’t the derby hat. It was Shires standing in the doorway behind me with a rifle to his shoulder, and while I watched, feeling a bullet hit me and go through me even before it was out of the rifle, he swung around and took aim at me.
“Hold on,” Ingoldsby said; “we’ve got time for that,” and he and Nickles just sat there looking at Willie Boy. He lay face down, one arm under him and the other stretched out, and the cap had fallen off his head and rolled away near the stretched-out hand so that it looked as if he was reaching for it. But he wasn’t. The only thing he did was move his legs. They pushed out and came back, slow and senseless as the pieces of a worm cut in half, both of them moving together no more than a few inches each time they pushed out and pulled back.
Nickles and Ingoldsby sat there and looked at him. Ingoldsby chewed on the bread in his mouth and washed it down with the rest of the coffee in his mug. Nickles puffed away at his cigar until he had a big light. Then he got up and put a foot under Willie Boy and rolled him over on his back.
“Bloody hero,” he said.
He bent over and took away the money and the gun. The money he stuck in his pocket, the gun he laid on the table. Then he picked up his derby hat, rubbed it on his sleeve to get it clean, and put it back on his head. When he moved out of the way I could see Willie Boy’s face. It was gray, and his eyes were open and glassy, looking up. There was a trickle of blood coming out of the side of his mouth but that was all, because the bullet had hit him in the middle of the chest, where there was a ragged-looking place showing on the pea jacket. And even with him on his back now his legs never stopped moving back and forth, back and forth, trying to get hold of something and not finding it.
“Bloody hero,” said Nickles.
“Still it makes a problem,” said Ingoldsby. “I knew it would, Monty. He’s not one of your Tom, Dick, and Harrys. His family’s got a name in these parts from what I’ve been told.”
“They’ll be glad to be rid of him,” said Nickles. “He was a troublesome, foul-mouthed bugger no matter how you look at it. They couldn’t have any more use for him than I did, or anybody else who knew him. A family don’t shed tears over that kind.”
“I don’t know, Monty. If he washes up on shore with a bullet hole in him they might stir things up. They’ve got money and position. I don’t fancy running up against that sort.”
“You’re an old woman,” said Nickles. “You’re British registry, aren’t you? And you’re in international waters now, aren’t you?”
“You know better than that, Monty. People with money and position are all under one flag. And there are times when I might want to use Halifax or Montreal. What do you gain if they snap the bracelets on me there and tie up the Anglesey?”
“All right,” said Nickles, “let’s stop the blabber. What’s the price in dollars and cents?”
“A thousand dollars, Monty. You can cut it right out of that roll in your pocket and the man’ll never know the difference. And if you keep a thousand for yourself I’ll swear it was only three thousand to start with so we’ll both make a bit of money.”
“And what about that boat alongside?” said Nickles.
“It’s all yours,” said Ingoldsby. “You’ll have to handle the sale of it, so you can pocket the profits. I’m not a greedy man, Monty. I don’t want it to be said I am.”
“Not half of it you’re not,” Nickles said, but he counted out the money and handed it over to Ingoldsby. “All right, that balances the books,” he said, and poked his head at Willie Boy. “Now what about him?”
“Well,” said Ingoldsby, “I’m not sure even a length of chain’ll keep him from washing up on shore before the fish are done with him. So if there’s no little matter of identification to worry about, Monty, we’ll sleep the better for it.”
He stood up, but Nickles stood up almost as quick and said, “Hold on, you old bastard,” and Ingoldsby waited while Nickles went all through Willie Boy’s pockets. He took whatever was there and laid it on the table next to the gun. “And that’s that,” he said.
“Only halfway,” said Ingoldsby, and he called into the passageway for Coe, and Coe came in.
Ingoldsby pointed at Willie Boy. “Get the clothes off him,” he said. “All of them.” And when it was done Willie Boy lay there naked. He was a fine-looking man. Big and strong and with a body white as milk. But the blood coming from the hole in his chest ran in strings down his sides and down his belly, and his legs never stopped moving. And when I saw that, I could see myself when they got done with me, and all the strength left me.
Ingoldsby went over to the stove and poured more coffee into his mug. He stood there and drank it down. “There’ll be a lot of women weeping about this,” he said. “Look at the ballocks on him.”
“He used them for brains,” Nickles said. “That’s all he had for brains, the bugger.”
“That’s the pity of it,” said Ingoldsby. “We’re all like that when we’re young, but to have the advantage of a family with money and position—he was taken and fingerprinted once, wasn’t he, Monty? On this side, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like that,” Ingoldsby said. “You might as well set him ashore with his name tattooed on him. That’s bad, Monty. This fingerprinting can be a troublesome business.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?” said Nickles, and Ingoldsby shook his head.
“Not you,” he said, “and not me. But we’ve got a proper man here looks like a butcher-boy, don’t he? He’s got the back for it and the shoulders.” And then he looked right at me. “You,” he said. “You, mister. You’re a butcher-boy, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t say anything. Not that it mattered what I had to say.
“Poke that gun into him,” Ingoldsby told Shires. “Let him feel it. Maybe that’ll help him find his tongue,” and then I could feel the gun digging into my back. “Well,” Ingoldsby said to me, “are you a butcher-boy?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes what, God damn your ignorant ways? Who do you think is captain on this ship?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and I watched him take down the big cleaver from the wall in back of him.
“Here,” he said, and Shires pushed me to him with the gun. “Here, butcher-boy, there’s a couple of hands laying there and doing nobody much good. Chop them off, do you hear? Chop them off quick and clean and don’t try any tricks with this thing while you’re at it.”
Then I saw I was holding the cleaver, and I said, “Ah, no. Jesus Christ, no. Ah, no, no,” but without strength in me, so that it came out whispering.
“Chop or be chopped, you bugger,” Nickles said, and I heard the gun cocked behind me, so that I fell down on my knees and swung the cleaver and the hand jumped away from under it and slid over the deck. Like a dead crab on the beach it lay there. And from the stump that was left blood gushed out over the cleaver, and it splashed my hand with heat like sparks of fire, and it poured out on the deck and ran down to the drain. And Willie Boy’s legs moved once more, and that was all.
And when I stood up and looked down at him I saw what I had done. And I could hear my voice crying out in tongues the way my father’s voice used to, and I swung the cleaver at Shires. He fell back against the wall to get out of the way, too surprised to fire that gun in my fac
e, and I ran up the companionway and across the deck with no hand laid on me. It was a long way down from the bulwark to the Ursula below, but I jumped it without thinking or caring. I landed on the engine-housing and rolled off onto the floorboards, and just when everyone on the Anglesey was running to her bulwark overhead and Shires was taking aim at me I slashed loose the line with the cleaver and kicked the motor over. I never heard the gun fired so maybe it wasn’t, but that didn’t concern me then. All I wanted to do was get away from that place which was Hell, and I ran the boat by the patrols, never caring about anything, but running for my life which was all I had left now that my soul was gone.
I made for Tippietown, and when I got to the bay outside it I was alone there in the dark and the quiet. Then I beached the boat on Dog’s Head which circled out into the bay a mile from town. And I got out and tried to wash my hands of the blood on them. I scrubbed them with sand and water but I knew the blood was still on them.
Then I got aboard and lashed the tiller of the boat dead ahead. And I split open the gas tanks with the cleaver as I was meant to do. And I lit a piece of rag in my hand and set the motor going and jumped out on shore, and as the Ursula moved away from me and headed seaward I flung the burning rag into her. She ran out to sea like that, going out into the darkness until I thought she would be lost for good that way.
And then she flared up and burned in a great fire. She burned like a torch in the hand of Ithuriel, and then she blew up so that the flames shot up into the sky and fell back, and the whole sea was on fire where she had been.
For that was what was written in the Book with my sins in it.
And as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood.
EIGHT
When it was done and there was nothing left but blackness on the water I found strength to go the distance from Dog’s Head to the cove at Tippietown. I walked and sometimes I ran, crying all the while like a woman and not able to stop myself, and sometimes I fell over driftwood or rocks and lay there, and then got up and ran again. And inside I felt as cold and empty as the night around me because my soul had been taken.
The Winter After This Summer Page 32