Jonah Watch

by Cady, Jack;

  The breeze was not a dancer. It held no cyclonic persuasions. It was interrupted. Sporadic. If it swirled, it did so because of broken flow that bent around buildings and vessels. Glass, in cynical sureness of the value of prophecy, would not ordinarily bet ten cents on a race that was fixed. Still, Glass was a child of New England. He shivered on the warm bridge, while the radio crackled, chattered, buzzed. Glass later confided to Lamp that he felt like "saying a little more about that breeze." Since he did not know what to say, he simply logged it.

  The breeze folded the mist, opened dark and narrow alleyways down which a man might peer, then closed the far entry, as if it were blocked by the appearance of a blacked-out and prowling police car.

  A pale light appeared on the mudflats where it was not possible that a light could be. It was like foxfire, luminous, indifferently unblinking as it flavored only itself while not revealing its surroundings. The light came and went and came and went, as mist ran in small torrents across the mudflats. Glass reached for a pencil, looked at the log, looked at his hump nose beneath untidy and lengthening hair reflected on the blacked-out screen of the radar, which behind its open mask took a faint sheen of red light from the night bulbs. Glass laid the pencil down, picked up binoculars. The light expanded, contracted, seemed in an effort of concentration. Glass watched, put the binoculars aside, picked up the telescope, although Hester C. lay within three hundred yards. The light was coming from the hulk. As Glass watched, it began to change, focus, become more incandescent.

  "Like a work light," Glass told Lamp. "Like when you see one-a these lobstermen putting over traps after dark. It was even swinging, like he was riding a swell."

  The mist whirled, swept, cloaked; and, through the wavering telescope, revealed a figure bent over the engine box. The figure was shadowed by the sideways cant of Hester C. The unwalkable deck seemed not to affect the figure at all. Glass would swear that if the thing had feet, it was using them to walk on mist. The figure was vague. It busied itself with its own concerns. It seemed to be drawn into the framework of the hulk, or into the engine box. Then it would rise as if attempting to step free of the wreck. Glass saw arms that waved in despair or struggle. The mist closed down, opened, closed.

  Glass checked the watch list. The sarcastic Racca was in the engine room. Glass pressed a buzzer beside a voice pipe.

  "Get up here. On the double."

  "Can't leave the station. We're on generator."

  "Move it. Move it."

  Racca entered the bridge, took the telescope, looked.

  "I'm going below."

  "You see it?"

  "And I'm staying below. For always. You've done some crazy things, Glass, but this cuts it." Racca's face was the color of whey, or at least it was that color when Dane later called him back to the bridge.

  Glass, having once before woken Conally on the subject of Hester C., went to the crew's compartment to wake him again. Glass thumped down the ladder with loud indifference to all sleepers.

  "This better be good." Conally came from sleep, and he moved like a man half afraid, half joyous over some grim confirmation. As he passed Howard's sack, Conally shook Howard.

  "You've had something on your mind, chum."

  "It's not my watch."

  "Get movin'. Glass caught hisself a ghost."

  Howard found himself staring, wide-eyed, awake. "Something funny's been going on."

  "Somethin's going on, but it ain't funny."

  "I'm surrounded by experts," Glass chattered.

  Fallon snorted, snorked, came awake. "What? What?" He rolled out, began pulling on his pants, then followed.

  The mist was updrafting, back flowing, like cold layers of slag magically unfrozen. There were cliffs and crevices in the mist; hollows, arroyos, switchbacks. It seemed geologic, and it seemed like the indifferent sweep of time or timelessness that chews planets into forms of dark mountains and dark seas.

  "You see it, you see it there?"

  "Call Dane. On the double."

  "Log it."

  "Don't log it. You crazy? Log it and you got it."

  "What do you reckon? "

  "It's fightin'to get loose."

  "What is it? What?"

  "That lobster guy, I think."

  "I don't think so," Fallon said. "I don't know what I think." He lowered a set of binoculars, and his keglike shape seemed suddenly frail, thin. "We're doin' okay," he said in a voice wrung from fear. "We're makin' it." He seemed to be pleading with a friend.

  A burst of static came from the radio, like chattering teeth, and, muted by mist, the commission pennant tapped from high above the heads of confused and frightened men. On the mudflats the arms waved, grasped, groped in undisguised battle as the creature struggled. The mist opened, closed.

  "It's swelling. Gettin' bigger."

  The mist closed over the bright light, opened again, and when Dane arrived on the bridge like a startled frog a-jump from a known and comfortable river bank, the bright light was dimming to luminosity. Dane looked at Conally, at Fallon. Dane's expression changed. His face no longer held the opinion that he had been woken by some punk seaman having dreams.

  "There," Conally said. "Right over there."

  Dane wrinkled his flat nose. "It's lights from the million dollar bridge. The mist cleared aft, and the bridge is glowin' at us." He looked at Conally, at Fallon. "Tell me."

  Conally told him. " ... and it's walking in that mist right now."

  "Then you got no trouble, right?"

  "A'course we got trouble," said Fallon. "What's it mean?"

  "Smell the breeze."

  "Wind?"

  "No fog by morning," Dane said. "It's just this minute come onto winter."

  Howard's voice was as querulous as a child begging to be spanked. "That has nothing to do with it. What does that have to do with it?"

  "If it's walkin' in the mist, and if there ain't no mist, then you got no trouble, right?"

  "I have trouble," Glass admitted with perfect diction. "I am not going to stand this watch alone."

  "You'll stand it on top of the mast if I say so." Without his chief's hat, Dane seemed not as bulky or tough. Thin strings of hair, and most of them white, lay across his skull like a tangle of webbing spun by a committee of spiders. His rolled shirt sleeves revealed thick wrists, heavy hands, and his fingers were tapping some invisible surface. He looked like a man digging through his ditty bag of tales. He discovered the memory he sought. He looked at Glass, at Conally. "Stuff like this happens. I never seen it mean nothin' yet."

  "It means something," Fallon said. "You didn't see it, chief."

  Dane, whose one law was competence, looked at Fallon, who had spent a winter running the engine room after the drowning of Jensen. Dane seemed to be mentally turning over the tale dredged from memory. "It means one thing. Crews get spooked if their main guys get spooked."

  Fallon hesitated, thought himself toward a brief jolt of understanding.

  Dane turned back to Glass. "Relieve the engine room." He turned back to Fallon. "When your punk Racca gets here, square him away." To Howard and Conally he said, "Set double watches. Kiddies get lonely." Dane gave a vague snort, for a moment seemed indecisive. Then he gave a full blown and heavy snort, the contempt falling back into his voice as surely as any actor pulling on his mask of role before stepping toward a familiar stage. "I was on an icebreaker once. You punks don't know nothin' a-tall about winter." He went below, stomping, as though feet could hammer nails of certainty through the brains of uncertain and tremulous men who stood on the bridge, watched each other, looked at the dark mudflats, and concealed from each other their private tremors.

  Chapter 15

  That man with a propensity for miracles, that Lamp, whose job it was to know what fits in those spaces between groin and heart, took the news hard when he woke. Instead of chatter, of boisterous soothsaying because his grim views were proving out, Lamp fought back. He told Brace to "get crackin'"; and Brace hustled, complain
ed, was always three steps behind Lamp, who behaved like a man in combat. Lamp challenged the miraculous with bacon, sausage, beef, ham, eggs, biscuits, gravy, fresh fruit, cold juices, and a vat of hot chocolate made from stores cached back in anticipation of holidays. Brace dashed about like a complaining sea sprite, one burdened with tasks that whirled his planet backward. There were not enough pots, pans, peeled potatoes. Men who were accustomed to eating rapidly sat on the messdeck and felt the small plunge of Adrian in the freshening breeze. They helped Brace along with their chortles, smart remarks; and they chewed and chomped and burped and chewed some more, as though it were Christmas.

  Lamp had "a feelin'," as he confided to Howard, and Lamp was doing something about his feeling. Even Howard had to admit that the mist ridden night seemed a little silly when remembered across a full plate—and with gravy, too.

  "Like that time in Hong Kong," Lamp confided to Howard. "The cook coulda pulled that one out."

  "What happened in Hong Kong?"

  "Later. I'll tell you later," and Lamp bustled, charged his enemy, attacking the invisible through a smokescreen of whipped cream for men to smear over pie. "It's almost a relief," he told Howard. "We know we got a fight. It ain't skiddy, now."

  Brace scrubbed pots, to see them immediately refilled. He was jolted into astonishment when the penurious Lamp railed at him to use an extra ration of coffee. Lamp squandered his commissary allowance like a man ashore with heavy pockets and a backlog of fantasies. Brace seemed suddenly grown thin of ambition, indifferent to lost hopes, and with mild distaste for all worlds including engine rooms.

  "We'd ought to have a ghost more often," Racca said. "We'd ought to have one every day."

  "You were scared three points off your compass," Glass told him. "You're a tough dago, Racca."

  "Especially around yids. Especially."

  And, as if it were Christmas, Levere, Snow, and Dane stepped from wardroom to messdeck, found space, and celebrated in a vague manner. Levere was serene but not withdrawn. Snow rode Racca and Fallon with small jokes. Only Dane was reserved. He watched Lamp, and his satisfied opinion showed only in a slight, forward shifting of his toadlike frame. Dane may or may not have known Lamp's motives, but Dane liked what he saw.

  As the freshening breeze kicked and moved Adrian against the pier, men relaxed with the tranquil readiness of sleeping cats. For some men, portent lived on an instinctive level. For other men, portent lived in the memory of harsh experience.

  "It'll be a yacht," Conally said, "and it'll be today, and it'll be nightfall or a little after."

  "Don't talk. Why ask trouble?"

  "Summer sailors."

  "They always get caught. Count on it."

  "Yacht from the Virgin Islands," Racca said. "Nothing but virgins aboard. Been at sea for three months gettin' lonesome ... "

  "What would you know about virgins?"

  Storm warnings never occur on a clear day, and as the light dulls into darkness in the northeast, and as the temperature crashes down like an anchor, vessels within reach of the coast make high-speed dashes to shelter. The channel lays a sharply pitching road for the pilot boat that heads seaward with pilots to meet more than one ship. A noble government—that is made of the firmest stuff—protects its cannon. From the sea-reaches come minelayers and destroyers, bulking rakish and gray against the dark sky as they head for the anchorage. The wind rushes, as if the continent has become a sudden vacuum, and the wind begins to howl above piling water. It does not moan, has no choreography, is only wind raised to a pitch of storm that denies any pretense toward music. In a while the howl will change to a scream, and the scream will be indifferent, although it seems, sometimes, to speak the name of a particular ship or a particular man.

  Adrian bumped and banged against its fenders. The crew belched, yawned, hesitated with reluctance toward movement that, when it began, would be totally absorbing and would allow no quarter even for a single belch. Conally stretched, stood; his face an Indian mask of veiled intent, or of preoccupation with securing the decks. Howard, his belly tightly pressed against his belt, shrugged into his foul weather jacket which carried a multitude of stains but no fingerprints. He left the messdeck to buck into the increasing wind as he went to the Base for the mail. He returned, opened the few envelopes, and discovered that Brace was off the hook. Somewhere en route, steward apprentice Iris was ordered to Adrian.

  "What kind of a name is Iris?" Lamp asked when Howard called him to the office.

  "An easy-to-spell name ... how should I know?"

  "I'll miss that Brace. That's no bad kid."

  "Levere says not to tell him yet. Let it ride. Otherwise you won't get anything out of him."

  "I can always get something out of him," Lamp said. "If I want to, I can get work out of any guy."

  Howard, having loosened his belt and found that his waistband was still tight, was in no mood to disagree.

  "You got a minute?"

  "Sure."

  "What happened in Hong Kong?"

  "The crew on a Navy can went asiatic." Lamp leaned against the frame of the hatch as Adrian's deck slid sideways in small, unexciting movements that were brought up short by the mooring. For the moment, at least, and having temporarily worked himself out of a job, Lamp had every reason to tell a sea story complete with embroidery, with moral twinges and judgment. His face settled in that direction. Then he seemed revolted by the idea. The directness of his morning's labor was a contradiction to ample rambling. His face, which was naturally red beneath the red-blond hair, was also red from the steam of boiling pots and the heat of his small galley which no fan could clear. For a moment Lamp looked nearly wise.

  "You remember how things got skiddy awhile back?"

  "Yes. Well, no."

  "Things were disappearing."

  "Yes."

  "The same thing happened on that can. They'd been on station a long time. The officers were as nuts as the crew." Lamp looked like he was going to apologize for something, then did apologize. "I'm not saying that our boys are that way."

  "What are you saying?"

  "They beat a Chinaman," Lamp said with genuine unease. "Only they beat him too hard. They had to toss him overboard to hide it."

  "Well ... well, what?" Howard, who would have sworn that he could deal with reality, jumped mentally sideways. "They needed somebody to lynch. Ask McClean. Happens all the time in Mississippi."

  "He was just a guy trying to make a livin'. He was just a guy who came aboard every day with fresh stores." Lamp seemed nearly as stalled by his story as was Howard. "It's the way it built up," he said. "The cook could've saved it, but he was asiatic as the rest."

  "I don't know what you're trying to say."

  Lamp looked suddenly shy, timid. "You think I fool around with stuff, and maybe I do. But we're gettin' some kind of sign."

  "Bad luck?"

  "I just know how bad it can get. I can fight that part, anyway." Lamp began backing from the office, one hand resting on the frame of the hatch. "They claimed that Chinaman was bad luck. The whole deal got hushed up. An officer was in on it." He backed away further, then turned and nearly fled, a man who had gossiped about a memory for so long that he had forgotten that the memory was stark.

  As a storm increases, ships fleeing past the Portland Head, chased by hugely running swells and by wind that raises shrieks in their rigging, have sometimes stumbled on the tide. The bottom builds out there. When conditions are exactly wrong, huge rocks are flung in grenades of water to explode high above the cliff where lore has it that they have occasionally knocked out the light. There is not much bottom. Small ships are twisted, flung, the helm a feeble protest when a fast-ebbing tide meets a full, incoming storm. It is like a giant roller coaster in an uncertain and macabre amusement park where tracks lead over the hump, come arcing down, and disappear into rock. Large ships have been gutted. Small ships, catching conditions that are exactly wrong, roll over. They offer a fast flurry of spray, a small contribution
to that vast wealth of water that lies on the collection plate of the wind.

  Yacht Aphrodite, schooner-rigged and not as old as mythology, but certainly as old as Adrian, and with a skipper who was no fool, confirmed Conally's prediction an hour ahead of schedule. Aphrodite's hull was disproving the idea that sound maintenance on an ancient bucket will avoid catastrophe. A design that had once held notions of watertight integrity had been violated through redesign. Aphrodite was taking water forward through a sprung plate. It had one watertight bulkhead just forward of midships. It had good pumps, a captain who was a friend of Levere's ... and, it carried a terrified owner who, downeast in Boston, was regarded as a valuable constituent. The man was "getting the cure" from the sea, which teaches that you cannot buy votes against a storm.

  "Steel hull. A hundred thirty feet." Radioman James spoke to a small group on the messdeck. James was below for a quick sip of coffee before Adrian, crashing ahead slow on steadily warming engines, reached the approach to the head.

  "Can we tow? Think of the draft on that thing."

  "Don't know, chum. Maybe tow from the stern."

  "Where's Abner?" Brace asked.

  "Still playing pattycake down south. Still riding herd on Able."

  Brace's eyes were bright with excitement. They held no fear. He had seen some weather, doubtless thought it was awful weather, doubtless believed he had seen the worst. He was filled with ignorant enthusiasm, excused, perhaps, because any kind of action no doubt seemed better than the dull promise of stewardship.

  "Take a turn, sonny," Lamp told him. "When you get done whoopin', secure the wardroom."

  Ships, following the romance of the sea with their grace and their resemblance to a womb, are said to embody a female principle; and the sea, itself, is called mistress, harlot, lover, mother.