by Jack Kerouac
Nick’s face had flushed, but his eyes retained their fixed frigid intensity, half angry, half fearful . . . indeed, Bill’s quavering voice sounded slightly maniacal.
“Well?” Bill shouted chokingly.
“I wonder,” Nick purred with contemptuous suspicion.
Bill jumped to his feet and stalked to the door.
“Oh!” he cried, “You’re a privileged anti-Fascist, you are! You’re the only one in the world!”
Nick stared rigidly at the other.
“You wonder!” mimicked Bill in a rage. “By George, you’re not worthy of the movement . . . you’re a confounded fool!” Bill tore open the door and plunged into the darkness, slamming the door with a smash.
He stumbled down the deck, choking with anger and humiliation; a mad satisfaction filled him despite all, the blood beating at his temples and intoxicating his whole tumultuous being in a hot rush of gratified rankle.
A voice was calling his name. Bill halted and turned around . . . it was Nick.
“Don’t be a dope,” he was yelling from his stateroom entrance. “Come back here.”
Bill stood clenching his fists spasmodically.
“Come on, Everhart!” Nick was laughing. “You’re a hot-headed reactionary, you are!”
“I am not a reactionary,” Bill fairly screamed.
Nick was laughing convulsively. Bill turned and stumbled away, muttering under his breath.
“Where are you going?” Nick cried, still laughing. “You know I was only kidding!”
Bill was almost at the poop deck.
“See you tomorrow!” Nick was calling, hooting with laughter. Bill went down the hatchway and back to his focastle, stumbling over a stool as he entered.
Palmer was smoking a cigarette in his bunk.
“Don’t kill yourself!” he laughed smoothly.
Bill growled something and vaulted up to his bunk; in five minutes he was asleep again, a deep, exhausted, sated sleep . . .
All night he dreamed chaotic tragic-comedies: Danny Palmer wore a dress and invited him to his bunk; Nick Meade was swinging from the ship’s mast, hung by an enraged crew of pro-Fascists; and worse nightmare of all, Wesley’s funeral was being conducted on the poop deck, his body draped in a mottled bedspread was slid over the side and Everhart watched the body sink with horrified fascination; it seemed, also, that the Westminster was steaming past a tiny island upon which sat George Day in peaceful contentment, and that when Everhart waved and shouted at his friend, the ship lurched away from the island at a terrific speed. A voice woke Bill. He was in a cold sweat.
“Hey, feller, are you Everhart?”
Bill sat up quickly: “Yes!”
“Monday morning. You’re deck mess boy. Dress up ’n come on down to the galley; I’ll give you your duties.”
Bill reached for his glasses: “Surely.”
The man went away, but not before Bill caught a glance of him. He wore a Steward’s blue uniform. Bill jumped down from his upper berth and washed up, glancing as he did through the porthole. It was very early morning; a cool mist raveled itself over the still, blue mirror of water. Bulls screamed and swooped in the morning sea air, nervously searching for their breakfasts, diving to the surface of the water and pecking quick heads to emerge in a fluttering ascent with dangling silver morsels. Bill, with his head out of the porthole, breathed deeply three times the thrilling, scented air. A red sun was just lifting over the harbor.
Bill dressed up in his old clothes and made for the galley in fine spirits. It was a beautiful morning . . . and a din of activity seemed to hum and clatter all over the Westminster . On the deck, seamen were sleepily engaged rolling up cables of rope, under the supervision of a gigantic First Mate with glasses. At the dock moorings, near the gangplank, shouting stevedores were rolling in more barrels of black oil, swinging in Army jeeps, carrying crates and boxes of all kinds. Bill looked around for familiar faces but found none. He went below.
The galley was in a turmoil over breakfast; all kinds of cooks and helpers Bill had never seen before on the ship were there, dressed in white aprons, wearing fantastic cook’s caps; they slammed pots, shouted to one another, fried eggs and bacon at the range, roared with laughter in the confusion of steam, cooking smoke, clattering dishes, clanking pans, boom engines throbbing under; and dashed here and there in frantic haste found only in kitchens. Bill began to wonder where they’d all come from.
In the midst of all this noise, Glory’s great voice moaned softly above all the rest as he walked calmly about his kitchen, with more dignity and acumen than the others, inspecting the sizzling bacon, opening pots and staring speculatively within, slamming shut oven doors. His booming basso was chanting, over and over again: “Everybody want to go to Heaven, but no one want to die!” He repeated this chant constantly, as though it were his litany for the new day.
Bill glanced around and saw the steward who had roused him; he was standing and watching the mad spectacle of the kitchen with saturnine approval. Behind him, a ray of young sunlight fell from the porthole. Bill went up to him: “Here I am,” he grinned.
“Deck mess boy? You have nine A.B.’s to serve; get their orders from the galley here.” The Steward motioned Bill to follow and lead him down the gangway to a small room starboard side. A table, covered with a checker cloth, stood in the center; in a corner was a battered old ice box.
“You serve them in here, three meals a day. Get the dishes from the galley. All your sugar, butter, vinegar, catsup and so forth is in this icebox. Keep it cold; the ice is in the refrigerator room near the galley. Get your aprons from the linen keeper forward to port.”
The Steward lit up a cigarette quickly.
“I understand,” said Bill. “I think I’ll like this job.”
The steward smiled to himself and left. Bill stood for a moment, undecided.
“Well, Professor Everhart, set the blasted table for breakfast!” he mumbled gleefully, and proceeded to do so with delighted alacrity. The Steward could afford to smile to himself, he knew very little about the little “deck mess boy,” by George!
Bill had everything ready when the first A.B. came in for breakfast, yawning noisily and rubbing his ribs in a dejected morning attitude.
“What’ll it be?” grinned Bill.
“Bacon n’ eggs pal. Coffee n’ juice.”
When Bill returned with his breakfast, the seaman had fallen asleep on the bench.
After breakfast—everything had gone smoothly—Bill began to clear away the table, feeling quite at peace with the world and especially with his new job. It was paying him around two hundred dollars a month with room and board, and all he had to do was serve three meals a day! The A.B.’s had proved a fine lot and a quiet one at that. The only thing that worried Bill now was that Wesley hadn’t been among them, and they were his focastle mates. He had obviously not returned—and perhaps wouldn’t. Although he liked his job, Bill frowned at the idea of sailing alone—that is without Wesley—for he felt lost in the midst of so many strange, unfriendly faces. These seamen, he mused seemed to accept one another at face value, without fanfare and without comment. All this was so different from the keen sense of distinction and taste which went with social life within academic circles. Perhaps the old adage, “We’re all in the same boat” went without saying in the Merchant Marine and seamen resigned themselves to one another quite philosophically. And of course, like the slogan he had heard of—a famous placard above the door of the Boston Seamen’s Club—which said, very simply, that all those who passed under the arch of the door entered into the Brotherhood of the Sea—these men considered the sea a great leveler, a united force, a master comrade brooding over their common loyalties.
As Bill was putting away the butter, Nick Meade put his head in the doorway.
“Good morning, old Tory!” he shouted.
Bill whirled around and stared; then he grinned: “Is that the way to talk to a worker?”
“A worker!” ejaculated
Nick. “Now you can belong to the working class if not to the movement!”
Bill put away the butter to prove his station.
“You were a pretty hot Tory last night!” laughed Nick. He was wearing his engine room clothes—dungarees, white sandals, and an oil-smeared sweatshirt.
Bill shrugged: “Maybe I was . . . you had it coming.”
Nick fingered his moustache.
“By Lenin! Were you ripping! I’ll promise this time not to tell The Central Committee.”
“Thanks.”
Nick was gone as casually as he had come, padding away swiftly, down the alleyway, and whistling something very much like the Marseillaise.
Well, reflected Bill, Nick had proved himself reasonable after all, but it had taken plenty of his own nervous resources to bring it about. Perhaps he had been silly last night, but despite that he had succeeded in bringing Nick to his senses; the fact that Nick probably looked upon him now with some doubt as to his sanity meant less than what had been accomplished. A sorry fiasco! . . . but with results. It would teach Nick to stop being a Marxist Puritan. It should also teach Everhart himself to mind his own business and cease playing the wounded moralist, the fool . . . but he was not sorry he had blown up in such an undignified manner; it made him feel stronger; he had lived up to his convictions on human behavior. By George!—he was learning more than he ever had in any class.
When he had finished, Bill went back above to witness the loading on of the cargo. He walked jauntily down the deck. Danny Palmer was leaning on the rail with another seaman.
“Morning, Palmer,” greeted Bill.
Danny turned his great blue eyes on Bill: “Hello, there.” His hair flashed like warped gold in the sun. “How do you like your work?”
“Fine,” chirped Bill.
They leaned and watched the operations below.
“Army Jeeps,” mused Bill aloud. “I suppose we’re bringing supplies to an Army base up there.”
“That’s right,” said the other seaman, a short powerfully built Italian. “And we’re taking back sick soldiers and Army base workers. See that lumber. That’s for additional barracks. We’re bringin’ oil, lumber, food, dynamite for blasting, Jeeps . . .”
“Dynamite!” cried Danny.
“Shore! We get an extra bonus for that.”
“The more money the better!” chatted Bill.
“Know something?” posed the seaman. “I heard we’re sailing tomorrow morning instead of day after.”
“Swell,” purred Danny. “Who knows, we may be going to Russia! Nobody really knows. These supplies may be for the Soviet Union.”
“Russia, Iceland, India, South America, Persia, Texas, Greenland, Alaska, Australia,” recounted the seaman monotonously, “—all the same; danger left and right. I got a buddie who went to Russia and come back to ship for Texas . . . and wham! Torpedoed off Virginia.”
“That’s the way it goes,” said Bill moving off. “See you later, lads.”
All along the deck, as Bill headed for Wesley’s focastle, a pageant of activity unfolded. Stevedores were hastily putting the finishing touches on the Westminster before she sailed, painting on a new coat of camouflage gray, stringing and testing electric circuits, puttering here and there with plumbing, rehabilitating the complex component parts of the ship in a haste that suggested an early sailing to Everhart. Perhaps it was true about tomorrow morning—and what if Wesley shouldn’t return by then?
As Bill was about to descend down the bow hatch leading to the deck crew focastle, he caught a glimpse of the captain of the Westminster as he stood before his bridge house chatting with the officers. He was a small round man, shorter by inches than any of his men, but the way they craned respectfully to his words belied his authority. From below, Bill could see the hard level eyes of the skipper, and very much like the ship’s skippers in fiction, this little man with the heavily-striped sleeves had eyes like the color of the sea, pale misty blue with a suggestion of green, and the vague promise of tempest gray. A man among men! thought Bill. A man with a special wisdom of his own, and a knowledge of the sea that could confound all the books, chart all the lanes, and detect all storms, reefs, and rocks in a world of hostile oceans . . . it would be a fortunate privilege to talk to this man—perhaps he was the type of skipper who enjoyed chatting with his crew, and if this was so, Bill determined to watch for the opportunity to make his acquaintance. Was this the world he thought he had known about? Had it ever before occurred to him the high and noble meaning of so simple a station as the sea captain’s?
Bill walked meditatively into the deck crew focastle. Wesley’s bunk was still empty. He retraced his steps aft, pondering on his next move. In his focastle, he gazed emptily at his suitcase before he began to pack. Wesley had left for good—by George, then, he would not sail alone. The whole thing had been a farce in the beginning, the fruition of a nameless yen to sprout his wings and fly into life. Life was life no matter where one lived. He packed his clothes and snapped the catch shut. All he had to do was hand in his job slip at the union hall desk and get back to New York by hook or crook. He should have realized at first Wesley’s deep-seated irresponsibility and lack of purpose; the man was no more than a happy-go-lucky creature to whom life meant nothing more than a stage for his debaucheries and casual, promiscuous relationships. He had lead Bill to this ship and then wandered off calmly as though all things in life were unworthy of too serious a consideration and application. What more should Bill have expected from Wesley? . . . he had proven himself quite convincingly in his cool rejection of Polly in New York that day they had started for Boston. God! Polly was perhaps still waiting for Wesley’s call! Well, Bill Everhart wouldn’t wait in vain for anyone . . . he’d never been that sort, and never would be.
Bill went up to the poop deck with his suitcase and stood for awhile watching the seamen arrange the cables in a great convoluted pattern on the deck. This was their medium, ships and the sea . . . it was no place for an academician. It was Wesley’s medium, too, and not his own—his place was in the lecture room, where people conducted a serious study of life and strove to understand it rather than accept it with an idiot’s afterthought, if any at all.
Behind him a ladder lead to the promenade deck. Bill put down his suitcase and clambered up; he found himself next to a great gun, its long barrel pointed toward the harbor. Several soldiers were busy oiling the gun at various points. Others were seated in folding chairs around the interior of the turret, reading papers and chatting. Bill peered silently at the gun; he had never been near so destructive a machine as this in all his life. It was a four-incher, and its graceful barrel was just then pointed ironically toward a destroyer in the middle of the harbor whose guns in turn were pointed toward the Westminster. Bill had not noticed the destroyer before—perhaps it had just slipped in, for her funnels were still smoking heavily. Perhaps, too, it was to be their convoy vessel, and it now sat patiently, waiting for sailing orders. Bill could discern small figures in white move in the confusion of the destroyer’s gray hulk, a formidable warship manned by ingenious toy sailors, her mighty guns pointed in all directions, her flags flashing in the sun.
God! thought Bill . . . were the fleets of Xerxes ever as warlike as this super-destructive mammoth, a lean, rangy sea fighter proud with the fanfare of death?
Bill climbed another ladder and found himself topsides. Well, if he was leaving he might as well see it all! He gazed down at the Westminster’s big gun and followed the direction of its sleek barrel toward the distant destroyer. He tried to imagine the smoke and thunder of a great sea engagement, the smash of shells, the list of dying ships . . .
The warm sun beat down on the top deck as Bill strolled aft. He was gazing aloft at the Westminster’s stack when he bumped into a steel cable. It ran to a boom pulley and down to a lifeboat. Bill advanced curiously and inspected the interior of the lifeboat: there were canteens, boxes, kits, canvas sacks, weather-beaten life belts, and several long oars. In the
event of a torpedoing, would he Everhart, have to spend days, even weeks drifting in one of these barks? It occurred to him he had not considered the extreme danger involved in all this; perhaps he had better leave after all . . . there was no virtue in rushing toward death, by George.
Bill went back to his suitcase on the poop deck and shuffled aimlessly forward. Nobody paid any attention to him, which was perhaps to his advantage; no one would miss him, and they would simply hire another deck crew mess boy and let it go at that. He, for his part, would return to his life’s work in New York, and that would be that. There were other ways of searching for experience; for that matter, there were other ways to raise money for the old man’s operation. He was in no immediate need . . .
Bill decided to go down to his focastle and pick up any object he might have forgotten in his haste to pack. Once down there he felt the need to lie down and think, so he vaulted up to his bunk and lit a cigarette.
Danny Palmer was combing his hair at the sink.
“Looks like we’ll sail soon,” he offered.
“Suppose so.”
“You don’t seem too eager!” laughed Danny, putting away his comb.
Bill shrugged and smiled: “Oh, it doesn’t excite me too much.”
“Yes, I suppose it is boring at sea sometimes. I’m going to do some reading, anyway, and I’ll keep a diary. There’s always a way to beat utter boredom.”
“Boredom,” said Bill, “is the least of my worries. I found out ennui was my mortal enemy years ago, and I’ve learned since then how to avoid it to some extent. I slip shrewdly around it . . .”
“Good for you!” grinned Danny. He wound his watch carefully.
Bill blew smoke rings with a troubled face.
“I still suspect we’re headed for Russia,” beamed Danny. “Murmansk or Archangel . . . and if so, I doubt if we’ll have time to be bored. It’s a notoriously hectic run. Have you met any seamen who’ve gone there?”
“Surely, two of them—Meade and Martin.”