by Peter Bowen
Lucretia shivered when I described the skulls and whatnots up in the mountains. “Awful people,” she said.
“I like ’em,” I said. “They got a nice, conservative foreign policy and they want to be left alone to pursue the good life. They ain’t never bothered by salesmen twice and they avoid the strain and uproar of importing a fresh religion and thus causing arguments. Fat grubs on every palm leaf, I say, and no foreign entanglements.”
I had a couple Colts and a shotgun, and I had agreed to turn them in to the captain as soon as the gangway was up and the tugs was hauling us round. He promised a thorough ship’s inspection as soon as we were under way.
When the tugs tautened the cables I took the guns to the captain who locked them away and went back to fetch Lucretia and we watched the Manila lights recede. The ship’s main engines were pounding though the screws wasn’t engaged yet and as soon as we was out in the ship’s channel the tugs slipped the cables and the ship—a good-sized freighter full of sugar, teak, green cow hides, and wickerwork—was under her own power, loaded down, and outward bound.
“Luther Sage Kelly, Turnip Herder,” I said to the sea breeze.
“You can’t mean you grow turnips on your ranch?” said Lucretia.
“Great big turnips,” I says. “They make no noise, they don’t shit, and as they can’t walk you don’t have to brand them.”
Lucretia’s laugh was a booming thing, a lady laugh you could hear good at a thousand paces. She threw her head back and roared. I wanted her suddenly, and grabbed her hand and we ran down the deck to the cabin.
So it went like that for a couple days, the ship’s crew would go past us stony-faced and then if you looked at their backs they was shaking with collared mirth.
I was out on the deck early one morning, I’d woke up bothered without knowing what and when the dawn came it was blood red to the east, where we were going. The old sailor’s rhyme run through my mind, and I shrugged it off, and then saw the captain scowling at it, too, and I began to worry. The seas were not big, but they had a peculiar brown-green tint to them and the tops of the waves looked oily. An albatross scudded west over us. I waved to the captain and he motioned for me to come up on the bridge.
“A bad one ahead,” he said. “I don’t know whether to cut north or south.”
“How ’bout turn round and steam flank speed for Manila?” I says, only about half jesting.
“It would catch us, and bad as they are with the bows into them, it is worse a thousand times to be caught by a following sea. The wind strips paint off.”
Typhoons could blow two hundred miles an hour, I’d heard.
The entire crew was turned to, securing the hatch covers and storing anything loose in the lockers and checking on the water kegs in the lifeboats. The storm was a ways off but when it got here there wouldn’t be any time for tidying things up.
I went to the cabin and found Lucy still asleep, her hand moved over to where I had been laying.
“Where you been?” she mumbled.
I sat on the bed and petted her.
“A typhoon ahead. I was talking to the captain.”
She yawned and stretched and sat up, the back of her hand to her mouth and the coverlet fell away from her breasts.
“Anything to do?” she said. “About the storm?”
“Nope. Crew’s got it.”
“Well, come back to bed,” she said, grabbing at my flies.
We had finished and were lying half asleep when the first of the winds got to us, and there was a low hum in the rigging and then the ship dipped into a swell and the tone changed. We listened to the soft deep hum, like an organ note almost too low to hear at all.
When the storm hit it happened in a flash second, and the rigging screamed and there was a sound of metal ringing—I thought a bucket left out had been battered along the deck. Rain so thick the damn boat could about float in it came, too, driven by the high winds and with such force that it seeped in through the seals of the portholes and the door.
“We’re stuck here!” I hollered. Lucretia grinned at me and came at me with her whole body, laughing while she did but I couldn’t hear a damned thing but the wind and the water. The storm was so loud we couldn’t have heard a damned cannon if it went off between us. There was enough water on the floor now to slosh a bit—maybe half an inch.
Twice I staggered to the portholes to look out—no clear idea how in the hell I would do anything about what I saw—the door opened out and the wind wasn’t putting more than two or three tons of pressure on it.
Lucretia thought it was wonderful fun. She laughed and whooped—I could tell which by the shape of her mouth—and she pointed to various belongings flying back and forth across the cabin.
I thought sort of idle-like that there was nothing at all to do—if the ship went down, we went with it and no argument. Death could be very close, and our dice was rolling on the wind.
Around midnight the wind died and we come into the eye of the storm. I got up and went out and looked at the sea, there was rafts of seabirds on the black water, silent, waiting.
Captain l’Heureux was trimming his fingernails with a bosun’s knife. He was rumpled and tired-looking, but the bridge was neat and he had a thick sandwich to hand.
“Mr. Kelly,” he said, “there is no extra charge for the excitement. Everything is fine below and we shall have another twelve hours of an interesting nature. But we shall be fine. The galley is closed, we cannot have a fire, but the steward will be happy to bring you sandwiches.”
He couldn’t have made it plainer if he had pointed, so I left and went back along the deck and found an unpadlocked locker full of kapok life preservers. I took four, and underneath there was a “Clemm’s Patent India-rubber Boat” and so I took that, too. Something was amiss and I warn’t being told about it. I used an air-cylinder to blow up the boat, it was small but plenty big enough for two, and it had a cover-fly to keep out the waves. I put the life vests in it and then I lashed it carefully to the inside rail, so I could cut it free with one swipe of the knife if the occasion demanded.
Lucretia got dressed and come out with me. I pointed far off to the east and said that we’d hit the storm there and this time the winds would be coming from the opposite direction.
“What’s wrong with this ship, Kelly?” said Lucretia.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing, but I like havin’ my bets hedged.”
The steward brought the sandwiches and a couple bottles of Saratoga Springs mineral water.
“Ain’t been there in forty years,” I said, shaking my head.
“Where?”
“Saratoga Springs. I was raised up near there.”
“In New York? Hell of a place to raise a scout.”
So she pestered me about my childhood and when I told her the true story of how I come to join the Union Army I thought she’d bust a gut laughing, and then I told her about Spotted Tail and Washakie and Jim Bridger and all. I gassed on so long the storm hit before we got everything nailed down.
Suddenly there was a horrendous shuddering jar, plates screeching even above the storm. It could only be one thing: we’d run smack into another ship adrift in the storm.
“Come on, come on!” I yelled, dragging her to the door. The water was coming over by the ton and I got a glimpse of a red-lead hull—we had hit a capsized vessel.
For a fraction of a second there was a lull in the wind, and I slashed the raft free and dragged it and Lucretia to the lee and I threw the raft over and when the seas fetched up again I shoved her off the rail into the raft and went after. I got the cover fastened and then I reached out for Lucy to hold her.
She wasn’t there. I felt and felt but she was gone.
19
I JUST KEPT SCREAMING and hollering and the storm paid no mind. I kept running what the last things I’d done before I thought I put her in the raft was, I thought on it till I thought I’d go mad. I raged and screamed and there was no help.
The storm raised hell all around me, and I hardly noticed, since I was passing my time by going insane. The wind died down and the sea got a little calmer, still fifty-footers but at least the top halves wasn’t being cut off and carried by the wind.
In time I opened the cover up and breathed real air and not the foul rubber-scented muck I had been torturing my lungs with for hours. The stars was out, and I thought we were coming on the morning. The eastern sky was soft and gentle, and it made me weep to see it. I tormented myself with all the whys and ifs I could think on. What the hell, it passed the time.
I was about half delirious and I looked round the little boat for water—wasn’t any, which I thought was fine as I planned to die as soon as possible. I began stropping my knife. A couple quick slices deep across the wrists and neck and I’d be gone like White Bear, the great Kiowa, how he escaped the prison. And over and over I kept saying to myself that I screwed it off. What had gone wrong?
No answer to that. There was a big puddle of rainwater, at least mostly, and I drank it warm from the rubbered cloth. It tasted like I was gnawing old galoshes, but water was water. It set me up a little, and I commenced into wondering where in the hell I was. The Warnecke had gone down, sure enough.
Time to time I would see a piece of dunnage or a scantling or a sail, eerily spreading under the water, but nothing on my close and narrow horizon looked like land or ship.
The seas died as the day grew, and it got hot enough so I put on a shirt. My lips were chapped and the skin between my fingers was splitting. It hurt like hell to put my hands into seawater. There were no medical supplies at all. If I could have coaxed a bird down I could have killed it and made the fat do for dressing.
The first day went past, sun glare on the water burning my eyes to where they felt like they was covered in hot sand. I knew it would just get worse until I went overboard to swim down to my love who would call me to the depths.
It got cold in the night, and the wind freshened and several flying fish fell in the boat. They was oily and greasy to chew but I et ’em. I had begun to have thoughts upon living, what will always perk me up is thinking on the list of folks I am going to shoot before I go down in a hail of lawman gunfire. Teethadore, John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan—it keeps a man alive to have a purpose and promises unkept.
There was enough rain for me to drink all I could hold.
The dawn was calm.
I saw a black speck on a wavetop. It was another raft. There was a flash of golden hair, cut short. It was Lucretia. Not quite believing my eyes, I commenced hollering and paddling with one of the ridiculous paddles the boat used for oars.
Lucretia turned and saw me and we did the same thing, jumped up and down in a leaking rubber raft. I damn near ruptured myself when I come down.
When she was close enough I leaped across with a line and pulled my raft to hers and lashed them together. We just kept looking at each other and laughing and then crying.
There had been two rafts bobbing in the storm and I had put her in the one and then got in the other. Things had been some confused and it was easy to see how it was done. Awfully easy. I still don’t understand it.
She had two bottles of mineral water and a bottle of brandy so we toasted our luck and though both of us was covered with saltwater sores and our mouths was cracked all round we were mighty damned glad to be one with another. We might starve or die of thirst or drown but it wasn’t much, not to worry, we’d go out together.
From the top of a wave I saw a freighter, and there was a flare gun and two shells in a pocket in the rubber boat. I fired off a flare and a moment later I saw one come up off the freighter, out of sight, but they’d seen us.
The ship hove to and come round and there was a boat down the davits in no time and a crew pulling like hell for us, the bosun calling out the pace. They hauled us in and rowed us back and we were going up the Jacob’s ladder when a familiar voice come to my ears.
“Ya look at this, Butch, why we are always the ones save him from the pay of his own mistakes like the fools we are. All he did was manage to give us a goddamned yacht ...”
“She gave us the yacht,” says Butch.
“Well, here they are again.”
“Is the bridal suite empty?”
“I moved out the sheep, yup, yessirree. The cut flowers and Spanish Fly will take some doing but we will manage.”
Lucretia and I come up to the deck, much torn and worse for wear, and there was Butch and Sundance all duded up like they was on the way to the whorehouse.
There was an unholy stink of cow everywhere, billows of it come up from below.
Lucretia was laughing and her lips were bleeding and Butch told Sundance to shut off and let’s get the lady taken care of. We were led forward to the main cabin, where there was a hot bath for Lucy and clean seaman’s dungarees and shirts and a Filipino steward who smiled and said there would be food brought up in a moment.
Lucretia bathed for a long time and I got in after her and we put on the clean clothing which felt like silk since it wasn’t all crusted with salt.
“That’s genuine Kansas City tailoring,” said Sundance through the porthole.
“All the best derelicts are wearing it,” said Butch.
“Come eat now, we have raw fish and seawater!”
We caught the steward as he was wheeling a cart for us out the door and he wheeled it back in and we was set down and served about forty courses of Chinese food and lots of pale Philippine beer and we felt the much better for eating. Every minute a new pulse of life would shoot through me.
The steward brought cognac and when we all had a glass he poured one himself and sat down. A nice, democratic ship. I sort of wondered how these two crazy sonsofbitches had come into possession of a cattle freighter.
“They want to know why we’re here, Sundance,” said Butch. “And no doubt some explanation of the ... accident ... with the yacht is in order. I believe it was hers.”
“Of course,” said Sundance. “My college years are bright in my memory ... but my mathematics was a little rusty.”
“Rusty,” said Butch, pointing to Sundance’s head. “I could hear the screek and scrawk as he thought on his math.”
“So we were several days on a course when we came across a freighter standing still upon the waters, and a boat was loaded and the captain himself came over and asked us where we were headed.”
“Pleasant man,” said Butch.
“We said Santiago, Chile,” said Sundance. “And he turned off very rude. He said that they were not in the fucking Aleutians.”
“Neither of us knew where the Aleutians was,” said Butch. “But the good captain was kind enough to point out that Santiago was not in them.”
“In who?” said Sundance.
“Copernicus here almost got us froze to death.”
“So then this captain asked us whose yacht it was we was going to the North Pole in.”
“We said ... Lucretia ... Lucretia ... Lucretia but we could not for the life of us remember your last name,” said Butch. “And we poured our hearts out to him.”
“We told him our names.”
“He’d heard of us.”
“He turned pale.”
“And the cows started bellering in the holds and we looked at each other and ...” Butch said, “I said when we get to Santiago what are we going to do by way of professional practice? Be yacht brokers?”
“So I said, ‘No, by God! We’ll be PIRATES!’ ” said Sundance. “I have always longed to climb over a taffrail with a cutlass between my teeth, or I did till I found out how goddamned heavy a cutlass is.”
“So,” said Butch, “we told the captain that we were new at the pirate’s trade, but we’d rustled a lot of cattle, so this was by way of informing him his yacht was waiting for him, and any who wished to join him.”
“Two did.”
“The rest have thrown in with us. We are bound for Santiago where we will sell the
ship and cows, and go over the Andes to Argentina where we will go back to robbing banks and trains,” Butch said. “If they have trains.”
“The whole crew is coming with you?” I said.
“Yes,” said the steward, “it is a great opportunity.”
Lucretia had her face in her hands and she was laughing so hard tears was running out between her fingers.
“Butch,” said Sundance, “do they have money in Argentina? I’d feel foolish if I walked into a bank and told them give me the money or I shoot and they didn’t know what money was.”
“There wouldn’t be banks if they didn’t have money,” said Butch.
“Well,” said Sundance, “I’ll worry till we get to Argentina and I see a bank and I steal money from it.”
“How did you ride out the storm?” I said.
“We prayed,” said Butch.
“Threw out a sea anchor and prayed a lot,” said the steward.
“I hope your yacht didn’t sink,” said Sundance to Lucretia, afloat in her puddle of tears.
“No matter,” said Lucy. “It was all worth it.”
“We’re bushed,” I said, lifting Lucretia up. “See you tomorrow.”
“Need anything?” said Butch.
“Sleep,” I said.
And we slept like the dead, straight on through for fourteen hours, and when I got up Lucretia was still out cold. I kissed her shoulder and I went out on the deck, unsteady on my feet.
The seas were mild and the day bright. I felt strong again, and marveled at my luck. I really had thought that Lucretia had gone in and drowned.
Who the hell had pumped up the other boat?
It was warm and brisk, and I took off my shirt and tossed it in the cabin, and saw my lady yawning, and stretching, so she would soon be up.
There was measured gunfire off the stern, and I wandered that way, to find Sundance practicing by shooting the sugar cubes that the steward was throwing out with a slingshot. I watched for a bit—it’s boring to see someone perfect do the same damn thing over and over again.