Chapel’s very existence, already a portrait of sad neglect, soon became a standing irritation to the old man. He obviously took no joy in the responsibility and reminded the boy of his indignation with every oath he swore. The old bully had eventually taken to smacking the boy around until Chapel had learned to dodge the blows. After that, the brutality became verbal, but no less painful for all that. Chapel began to spend as much time away from his uncle’s house as feasible, and that seemed to accommodate everybody’s interests.
Unsupervised, floundering, and broke, Chapel launched himself into various categories of willful mischief, but as was to be expected, his dismal attempts at novice criminality were habitually doomed to exposure and punishment. It required a considerable amount of good fortune to be a marginally successful criminal and, of course, Chapel Lodge had no such luck and everyone knew it.
There came a time when Chapel discovered that he had burned a few too many bridges on his old stomping grounds, and he quickly decided to test pastures farther north. San Francisco might offer the silver-lined pockets and the requisite anonymity necessary to a petty thief. Having spent most of his youth in agrarian settings like Santa Maria, Paso Robles, and Stockton, Chapel had an itch to see how the big city eagles lived. Life with the sparrows held no further appeal. He’d been a sparrow all his life, and he hated it. Perhaps San Francisco would also prove less precarious to his liberty. He had already done plenty of time for vagrancy and petty theft, and he didn’t look forward to repeating that experience. He was sixteen and ready to strike out alone, for alone was all he knew. He somehow felt he could handle any eventuality if just left to his own devices. How he supported this cheerful illusion of his future success remained a mystery even to him.
So one day, at approximately three in the morning on the edge of town, Chapel Lodge lay hidden near a railroad siding on which a slow, northbound freight wheezed patiently. It was waiting for the fast night express to pass before pulling back out on the main line. Chapel watched the fireman make his inspection of the cars to roust out bindle stiffs from the support rods under the cars. When the commotion had moved on down the tracks, and just before the freight pulled out, Chapel crept out from the underbrush and dashed for a tarpaulincovered flatcar loaded with heavy machinery. He vaulted aboard and ducked under the stiff, oil-stained canvas. There he made a nest for himself between the crates. Using his packed bedroll as a pillow, Chapel lay back and went to sleep. Lulled by the slow and steady counterpoint of the rails’ joints, he rested peacefully for hours.
Visions of fast times and easy living spun through Chapel’s dreams like dust devils in dry fields. He awoke to the jolting switches in a shunting yard on the outskirts of San Jose. Barely managing to evade watchful firemen and railroad cops, Chapel at last located and jumped aboard the market train for San Francisco. This time he was forced to sling-ride the truss rods under a freight car filled with iced fish. This mode of travel proved uncomfortable, odorous, and dangerous in the extreme for a newcomer to the sport.
Chapel at last achieved his destination and was wonderfully impressed with the size and power of it all. San Francisco was certainly a treat to behold for a boy with dreams. He had never seen anything like it. Beautiful houses graced the hills; the bay boasted a forest of ships’ masts, and scores of steamers moved in and out of the narrows. But the best thing, to Chapel’s way of thinking, was the complete absence of plowed fields and dusty farmers. However, any illusions he might have harbored about sharping the slickers were soon painfully dispelled.
Young Chapel Lodge was spotted as a raw rube the first moment he surfaced on the waterfront. Two black eyes and a broken hand soon led Chapel to see the errors of blind supposition. So he pondered his predicament and decided that a more forthright means of making a living might just forestall his taking up residence in a pine box in the near future.
The boy needed work and the docks always needed labor, so Chapel gravitated toward the rugged haunts of stevedores and teamsters. After two days of futile searching and sleeping rough, Chapel fell in with a shifty-eyed bosun’s mate named Baily Pryot.
They discovered each other in a dockside rum-dive so disreputable the owner had dispensed with giving it a name. Pryot took Chapel’s measure and offered to share his bottle of smuggled Russian vodka. Chapel had never tasted vodka before. He found it reminiscent of tar solvent and so was only mildly surprised that he remembered next to nothing when he awoke many hours later.
Even before he opened his eyes, Chapel Lodge knew he was in a bad way, perhaps dying, maybe worse. He’d never felt so sick.
His body floated left and forward, then right and back. Nausea and profound discomfort greeted every movement. Eventually the fetid pungency and constant throbbing vibration of his surroundings made him wish he were dead. His half-realized world smelled like an oil-slicked harbor at low tide, but somehow far worse by virtue of the odor’s clinging proximity.
When Chapel at last opened his crusty eyes he saw very little. He lay on a shabby, thin mattress that smelled of cheap hair grease and aged sweat, and his body continued to move in a most distressing fashion. He tried to sit up, but hit his head on a low metal beam and cried out in pain and anger. A strange voice called out of the gloom. “If your name’s Lodge, you’ll be wanted on watch at the boilers in ten minutes.… I wouldn’t miss another watch-call, if I were you, son. Captain Billy Ortega is a thoroughgoing son of a bitch when it comes to strict ship’s orders. By the way, welcome aboard, for all it matters to the gulls. There’s java in the mess for the weak of heart.” With a rude clang of a closed hatch the voice was gone.
It took a while for Chapel Lodge to piece together the events leading to his employment shoveling coal into the boilers of a grain ship bound for Alaska. When at last he located Baily Pryot drinking coffee in the galley, Chapel was ready to eat the man’s liver raw. The bosun saw him coming, smiled, and raised his cup in salute.
Weasel-eyed Pryot, amused to the point of coarse laughter, informed young Mr. Lodge that the whole affair had been his own idea. Chapel had even insisted on waking the purser to sign ship’s articles at four o’clock in the morning. If there was anybody to blame for his present difficulty, Chapel need only seek out his own wasted reflection in a mirror and rebuke that image instead of his friend.
Pryot swore on his mother’s grave that he had tried to dissuade Lodge from such a rash course, but that Chapel had insisted on having his own way at every turn. What was an honest seaman to do? The ship needed a stoker, and Chapel seemingly leapt at the opportunity. “Case closed, mate, signed and fair. Legal under U.S. Maritime law, by God,” declared Bosun’s Mate Pryot with total conviction.
That was the end of all official discussion on the matter. Chapel soon came to learn that ship’s rules and captain’s prerogatives were holy writ and should be obeyed above the laws of heaven. Villainous conduct of any description, negligence of duty, or disrespect to officers, carried a variety of very unattractive penalties far more severe than one would expect on dry land for similar offenses.
Authority was rigid, work was hard, and the days seemed never ending. This volatile mix of strange and aggressive elements did not bode favorably for Chapel’s future in the merchant marine. If prior traditions were to be taken as an indication of probabilities, there was every likelihood that Chapel would visit Alaska in chains and presumably remain there under harsh detention for some years to come.
Many strange and wonderful curiosities abound in this world, and the conversion of Chapel Lodge was not the least of these. One might not be able to put a finger upon the direct cause, but the binding effects of responsibility and discipline upon the boy were remarkable given the context of Chapel’s predilections. In fact, Chapel Lodge came to love his life at sea. He soon found he needed and respected this tribe of hard men who patterned and protected his floating world more than he needed life ashore. He slowly discovered pride and purpose in his work because others depended for their lives upon his attention to d
etail and duty. Being needed and trusted was a novel sensation for young Chapel, and he began to look forward to even the hardest watches to prove himself worthy of that warming confidence.
Chapel began taking a sincere interest in his ship and its workings. Eventually, the stoker’s mate and bunker boss commended Chapel to the chief engineer for his spirited attention to duty, a unique quality in a semishanghaied landsman. That simple commendation pleased Chapel more than a mother’s kiss, and he worked even harder to garner favorable recognition from his mates and officers. By the time he sailed back into San Francisco Bay five months later, he would not have been recognized in form or fashion by his closest friend—if he’d had one to care either way.
By the time Chapel had spent ten months aboard, he had been rated an able seaman and received appropriate pay and papers, a truly remarkable accomplishment for a green hand. He had worked hard and wholeheartedly set himself to learn to hand, reef, and steer to achieve that rating. But his first love would always be the great engines and boilers that dwelt in the deepest vaults of his ship. Chapel was fascinated by the scale of power they represented, and the thought of being master of those dynamic forces lured him to study everything he could about those powerful machines.
During the next eight years, Chapel Lodge sailed aboard five good ships and experienced several long, hard passages, but his favorite voyages were always merchant cruises along the coast of California. It was wonderful and strange to see one’s homeland from the ocean. The shores defined the edge of everything safe and familiar, yet he never spent any time visiting old haunts. Chapel was more than satisfied with his new home at sea.
He often deliberated upon his life prior to going before the mast as it were, and Chapel had formed the nagging suspicion that perhaps he was just unlucky on land. He’d often heard sailors’ gossip reflecting all manner of fo’c’sle myths and superstitions, but the general thread of most tales held that grievous things happened to seamen who went ashore for any long span of liberty, and Chapel was more than willing to accept that axiom on faith.
It was therefore very disconcerting when Chapel found himself beached in San Pedro. Able Seaman Lodge had lost his berth, his home, and his friends. His ship, the steam schooner Orion, required new boilers and shafts and would be out of commission for three months at the very least. The thought of being trapped on shore made Chapel extremely anxious. He felt sadly out of place without his ship and messmates and strangely at odds without ship’s work to occupy his time. So on his second day ashore Chapel went right out to find a berth on another vessel.
A week went by without success. There were more seamen on the beach than ship’s berths out of San Pedro. Chapel had every reason to worry. Many of the men he met at the hiring halls held greater seniority or more practiced skills than he. It looked as though he would have to go begging for a ship, and even that might take weeks of waiting, maybe months of cheap harbor boardinghouses and idle hours waiting for a shorthanded ship to make port.
Chapel made the rounds of every tavern and saloon frequented by ship’s officers. Perhaps he would run across someone who could help him find a berth before he ran out of money or sanity. Then one day, while making his futile tour of waterfront dives, Chapel spied a leathered face he knew only too well. It was Bosun’s Mate Baily Pryot, and he was deep in conversation with a spotty-faced chandler’s apprentice. When Pryot caught sight of Chapel he waved him over and greeted him with sentiments that would have made it seem that they had parted only the day before, when in fact, it had been years since their last meeting. Pryot slapped Chapel on the back and insisted they share a bottle at Galba’s Cantina just up the road from the harbor.
Chapel cheerfully accepted the invitation. He hadn’t seen a familiar face since he’d been beached, and he longed to pour out his troubles to a comrade of the decks. At first they shared past voyages and ports, but after a couple of glasses of Señora Galba’s homemade rat poison, they moved on to present scuttlebutt and rumor, always the seaman’s favorite discourse and pleasure. At last Chapel disclosed his sad predicament in terms even Pryot could understand.
“You’ve got to help me, Baily,” Chapel said, “I’m going crazy on the beach. If I don’t find a berth soon, God knows what will happen. Probably just get myself in a heap of trouble again. I’m no damn use on land. It’s just not lucky for me. If I’d known this when I was a kid, I would have jumped aboard the first ship that came within swimming distance. I’ve been up and down these docks for days and can’t find a berth on a garbage scow. You’ve always got your finger in the wind, Baily. Tell me what to do or who to see. I’ll crew a ship to hell if it will get me off the beach and away from San Pedro. What do you say, mate? Can you do anything for me?”
Baily Pryot swallowed hard and pondered his young friend for a few long moments. After thinking it over he shook his head and pursed his lips in the negative. “I’m sorry, son. I can’t think of a thing at the moment. I’m bosun’s mate of Pacific Mail’s Columbia, and I know for a fact we’ve got more hands than we need. But she’s a great little ship for a fact. Brand new. Laid down in Pennsylvania according to her commission plaque. She’s fast and sea-kindly, the best of everything and a good feeder. I wish I could get you aboard, old son. You’d like her. And you should see her engine room. Not a fleck of rust; you could eat off the oiler’s deck, she’s so clean. Just to see her makes you want to move right in and set up housekeeping. Captain Barr sees she’s kept as bright as a penny, he’s that proud of her.”
Suddenly realizing that he was almost gloating over his own good fortune when poor Chapel was in chains against a lee shore, Pryot decided to shut up and drink.
There was a long pause in which neither man knew quite what to say. Then suddenly Pryot brightened, smiled, and slapped the table. “But wait! Damn me for a tinker, I should have thought of this before. I might just have a barque up my sleeve after all. We crossed wakes with the Los Angeles coming out of Newport Beach first dogwatch, Monday evening. We make far better time, you see; that’s why we carry the mail,” he said proudly. “Anyway, she should be berthing sometime around midnight, and I know the third officer real well. His name is Roger Ryfkogel—strange duck, but a good officer. He owes me a favor or two from the old days. Now, Captain Leland is the devil’s own taskmaster by reputation, but fair by all accounts. He works as hard as any man on his crew, and they regard him well for it.” The bosun’s mate poured out more wine. “I couldn’t wish you a better berth, come to think of it. Captain Leland won’t abide scrubs or bilge runts, so you’ll always find a pretty decent bunch of hands on his decks. He demands a sharp galley too, since the bridge messes on crew’s rations. You’d take to the Los Angeles; she’s a steady ship, like I say, and she pays wages on the spar deck every fourth Sunday like clockwork. That’s better than most tubs you can name.”
Pryot watched as Chapel’s expression turned from one of sad despair to a grin of remarkable proportions. He almost looked boyish in bright expectation. “That’s the ticket, Mr. Pryot, you steadfast old jack staff. What a joy you are to see. Shall I go aboard when she docks, or wait till they set first deck watch?”
“I’d do it first thing. You’re not the only blue devil stuck on the beach, you know. There’d be good hands salivating at the breakwater if word took hold. These be lean times for poor sea beggars like us. Now listen, the Columbia leaves on the morning tide, middle watch. If the Los Angeles berths before we sail, I’ll go with you and grease the way. If not, I’ll write you a note for Mr. Ryfkogel with my compliments and brassbound recommendations. He’ll recall that blond music teacher in Oakland I saved him from. That should do the trick. I’d tell you about it, but that wouldn’t be on the square. Ryfkogel is a good egg and a Mason like my old man. Bless his bones.”
Pryot moved to refill Chapel’s glass by way of celebrating a possible solution to his friend’s dilemma, but Chapel put his hand over the glass and smiled. “It wouldn’t go down well to report to the deck with a load hois
ted. Why don’t I trade out for the best supper in the house to show my appreciation. I’ll even send the bar boy out for cigars later. What do you say?”
Señora Galba took Chapel’s money and laid on a remarkable variety of food for the price. The two sailors gorged themselves for hours. Every time a plate was cleaned, it was replaced with another until they could take no more. After their dinner, Chapel and Pryot retired to Señora Galba’s little whitewashed veranda overlooking the harbor. From their vantage point on the hill they could see everything that came and went in the maze of docks and piers below. The bar boy brought their cigars and great steaming mugs of coffee laced with sweet, dark rum. The two sailors propped up their feet and enjoyed the shank of the evening in idle gossip and tall tales that passed for fact.
Below in the harbor there was still a great deal of activity. While some ships slept at their moorings, others were alive with bustle and enterprise. Cargo and supplies, mail and passengers came and went under the flickering lights. Their reflection in the water gave the scene a festive air.
Down to a Soundless Sea Page 4