8
To get to the mess, officers had to go outside, down the ladder from the wing to the weather deck, all the way around to the crew’s quarters at the aft end of the deckhouse. It was very cold, we wore our hats and coats and heavy boots, and I tucked my mitten inside Alv’s glove. The Manitou had cleared the stub piers and was in the basin between the breakwaters. Under the heavy gray sky the bluffs to the north and south of us looked shapeless and dingy. Snow had blown off the sides, and it looked as if the hills themselves were sliding down to the ice that was all around us. Frost rimed the walls of the deckhouse, icicles hung like jagged bones from the boat deck, and when we came out from the overhang there was snow on the deck, but the crew had shoveled a path for us just like it was a sidewalk in Frankfort.
We stomped our feet, and then the rich smell from the galley seemed to suck us inside. It was a smell layered with onions and beef and sweet pillows of yeast, and though the passageway was dim even the yellow lights seemed to exude a warm fragrance, as if the cold outside had mixed our senses up together, and we had walked across the North Pole to a place where warmth wasn’t just something you felt but smelled, and you could hear it too, warm spurts of laughter in the stew of voices from the mess, where the crew had gathered at a long table covered with oilcloth in a cheerful red-checkered pattern. It was the jolliest room I’d ever seen. There were stools instead of chairs, like the piano stool in our parlor at home except these were bolted to the table. A blackboard at the end listed the food, but it didn’t matter that I couldn’t read because it all smelled so very good.
“Who is this?” the porter asked, stooping a little, as Alv hung our hats and coats on hooks.
“This is the captain’s daughter, Fern,” Alv said.
“Well,” the porter said with a breath that tickled the top of my head, “pleased to meet you, little lady,” and the only man who hadn’t looked up laughed, but no one else did, and it seemed as if he wasn’t laughing at what the porter said but at some joke he’d told himself. He was hunched at the end of the table, mumbling into his sleeve, and his laugh was so abrupt it sounded more like a bark. “Would you like a glass of milk?”
“Yes, please,” I said and picked a stool next to another empty one for Alv. There were six stools on each side, but the only person I knew was Alv, though now of course I remember every one of the crew by name. That first dinner Walter, Holgar, Axel, Red, Slim, Roald, Hans, Odd, Dick Butler, and the bosun were at the table, and that wasn’t even half the crew because the men worked and ate in shifts, and the officers had their own dining room, though the bosun and engineers ate with the crew. The porter, Jake Andersen, wore a spotless white apron, because on a boat everything is always kept very clean. The bosun sees to that.
“Coming right up,” he said, and the bald man across from me said, “Jaysus!” and helped himself to a salt shaker from one of the wooden boxes that were weighted to the table, because that’s another thing about a ship—everything has to be fastened down. Some of the men wore their watch caps, but his bald head was as shiny as a bowling ball though it was shaped more like an egg that seemed a size too small for his thick neck. I put my hand to my scalp and wondered whether my head glistened like that underneath my hair.
Jake brought my milk and asked if I needed something to boost me up, but I liked my stool the way it was. “Wasn’t planning on a youngster,” he said.
“Wasn’t planning on womenfolk,” the bald man said. One of his front teeth was gold. I thought that if I had a gold tooth I wouldn’t have such a sour tone, but this was Rudy, the bosun, and you wouldn’t want a please-and-thank-you voice to boss the deckhands around. “Women’s bad luck on a boat.”
“Little girl never hurt no one,” Walter said. He was the third engineer, and he took a liking to me from the start because he had his own small daughter at home.
“Women and preachers,” the bosun said. “You ever hear of the Hunter Savidge? Girl just about this size on her when she went down.”
“What’s the matter with you?” the redheaded fireman asked. His real name was Elmer, but his hair was such a flaming orange they called him Red. Rings of soot were ground into his hands and the skin around eyes. He worked at the very bottom of the ship, in the firehold, where the firemen stoked the fires for the big Scotch boilers and answered to the chief engineer instead of the bosun. “Telling the captain’s daughter about ships that gone down.”
“Women, preachers, and fairies.” The bosun aimed a glare at Alv, and that’s when I noticed that several of the other men were staring. I thought they probably couldn’t help it any more than I could. He was that beautiful.
Holgar made a point of looking away. “So how do you like our tub so far?” he asked me. A little whistle in his voice seemed to come out his nose. He had a face like a mushroom, and his coveralls were spattered with paint. That was how you could tell the deckhands, I learned, because one thing a deckhand never finished was the chipping and scraping and painting that is forever taking place on a ship, that and scrubbing everything down with a kind of soap called soogee that reddened their eyes and turned their hands raw, all except for Alv, whose sweater was as spotless as the porter’s apron because this was his first trip, and that was how you could tell a deckhand was new.
“I like it. I think I’ll be a sailor when I grow up,” I announced.
Bosun rolled his eyes. “Well, if we ain’t on the Good Ship Lollipop.”
The men began to joke among themselves while the porter brought their orders. “And what can I bring you, little lady?” he asked me.
“I want the meat, please,” I said. “And the potatoes and the vegetables and do you have dessert?”
“We got anything you want.”
“So Ole died,” Axel said. He was the deckhand with a harelip, which was something I had never seen before. It looked like someone had tried to stitch his mouth up to his nose.
“Not another Ole and Lena joke.” Slim groaned. He was a watch, and they called him Slim because he was so tall and skinny, almost as tall as my father, but even thinner, and his ears stuck out. He ate with a spindly forefinger planted on the middle of his plate like he was afraid it might fly away. I never did learn his real name. But he had an important job. Every half hour he was supposed to check everything on the boat. Some people thought that the Pere Marquette 18 went down because a deadlight in the flicker was open and they blamed the watch, though other people blamed the captain for sending the distress call out too late. “We’ve heard ’em all already.”
“Ja, but Alv here hasn’t,” Hans said, and some of the men gave Alv a sidelong look, like they were peeking and didn’t want anyone else to know. A lot of Norwegians and Swedes said ja when they meant yes, even the ones born in Michigan, but the word sounded different in Hans’s mouth, and that was because he was German. I thought his accent must be the way people in Wisconsin talked. Wisconsin seemed so far away I expected people there would speak another language.
“I haven’t heard it either,” I said, which seemed to strike most of them as funny as the joke itself, though their laughter didn’t take quite the right tone. It didn’t occur to me that most of the men, not just the bosun, would prefer not to have the captain’s daughter at their table. The porter brought my plate of meat cakes and potatoes fried with onions, and on the side there was a thick, creamy mound of cottage cheese, some coleslaw, big coins of pickled beets the color of rubies, and fat, buttery rolls.
“You just don’t like it because Ole and Lena are Norskies.”
“Ja, but when a Norskie tells ’em, Lena and Ole are Swedes.”
“Well they sure as hell ain’t never Finns,” Axel said, which seemed to settle it. There was so much paint splattered on his coverall you couldn’t tell what color it was. All the deckhands except Alv wore coveralls over their heavy sweaters, which made their arms look so lumpy it was a surprise to see regular-size hands coming out of the sleeves, though the men who worked below just wore shirtsleeves because
it was over 100 degrees in the firehold and engine room even on the coldest day of winter.
Holgar put his coffee cup down. “Take it from me. You don’t never want to work on a boat run by a Finn. Finns is warlocky.”
“Paavo ain’t.” That was Roald, the deckhand with sloped shoulders and a voice full of gravel. I wasn’t sure who Paavo was, except that he wasn’t at dinner with us. Anyway I was more interested in Axel. I turned my eyes back to the shiny ruck of skin above his upper lip. The bosun glared at me. “What are you staring at?”
“What happened to your mouth?” I asked.
“Nothin’. It came this way.” Then Axel smiled, a big smile, kind of fake, twisted like he wanted to show me the way his mouth worked, and it scared me a little, but I didn’t want to let on, so I said, “Well, mine came like this,” and the men all snickered, but Axel didn’t seem to mind. “Hey, she’s a kid. Kids say what they think. Rather that than someone thinkin’ but not sayin’.” He cleared his throat. “So Ole dies and Lena goes to the paper to put a notice in the obituaries.”
“Is this a clean one?” Walter asked with a nod in my direction, and the bosun glared again, which made me think better of asking what obituaries were.
“The man at the counter says he’s sorry but what does she want to say about her husband, and Lena says, ‘Just put Ole died.’ ‘That’s all?’ he asks, but then he gets it, she’s worried about the money, because you know that dumb Norskie never made nothin’, so he tells her, ‘Surely you want to say somethin’ more. First five words is free.’”
“Know how to tell when a Finn is an extrovert?” Holgar asked. “He stares at your shoes while you’re talking.”
“Do you mind?” Axel said as the men began to titter. “I was the one tellin’ a joke here.” He leaned forward. “So Lena thinks a minute and finally she says, ‘Okay. Put Ole died. Boat for sale.’”
All the men laughed, even the bosun, so I did too. Only the man at the end of the table, who also wore paint-spattered coveralls, who had long, thin fingers coming out from his sleeves and a twitchy rabbit’s face, all pink around his eyes and nostrils, didn’t laugh. He was still muttering to himself, so I tugged at Alv’s sleeve and whispered, “Is that the drunk man Odd?” The men began to laugh again.
“Hey, Odd,” Red said to a man on the other side of the table with a sunken chest and little streak of blood in one eye, “you sneak any of that coffin varnish aboard? You know the captain don’t allow drink.” He winked, and Roald leaned toward me. “That there is Twitches. Don’t none of us know what he’s jibbering about all day, but doggone if he ain’t the strongest hand on the boat.”
“He’s a teetotaler is his problem,” Odd said.
Roald laughed. “Him and this boy that brung the captain’s daughter, but he’ll learn to take a nip soon enough if he wants to sleep. Matey always makes the new boy bunk with Twitches.”
Holgar turned to Alv. “Got your sea legs yet, boy? When we get to Menominee Bosun’s going to make you jump the clump first.”
“If,” Dick Butler said.
“What do you mean?” Holgar asked.
“She’s leaking. All that ice last run damaged the hull.”
“Says who?”
“Paavo. She’s leaking in the coal hold. And you can trust a fireman to know.”
“Pumps are keeping up,” Walter said.
Dick snorted. “For now. It’s a long way across the lake. Run into a storm, she’s going to need all that coal.”
“Wouldn’t be the first ship to use fans to dry it out,” Walter said. “Captain wouldn’t take her out if she wasn’t seaworthy.”
“Would if the railroad said to.”
“Does Captain know she’s leaking?” Hans asked.
Dick shrugged. “Ain’t my job to tell him.”
“Lucky us then. Don’t run, you don’t get paid. Besides, Larsen calls the shots below.” That meant Larsen had to be the chief engineer. Holgar turned back to Alv. “Better get ready for Menominee. That’s when we’ll see if you know how to earn your keep.”
Red rubbed his cheek. “Ain’t Menominee got grates?”
Roald guffawed. “Shows what you know down in the firehold all day. Once those pilings ice over, grates don’t make no difference at all. Just wait till new boy gets to Green Bay. It’s a hell of a lot colder that side of the lake.”
“And that’s one shallow body of water,” Axel added. “Freezes to the bottom, and you never seen a passage so full of rock and narrow. They don’t call it Death’s Door for nothin’.”
“Haunted too.” The bosun sat up straighter as if the conversation had suddenly picked up interest. “Storm nights in a north wind that old lightkeeper at St. Martin Island still goes out looking for his kids.”
“Did they get lost?” I wanted to know.
Bosun leaned his face across the table toward mine and with a sour spray of breath hissed, “Disappeared in a storm rowing home from school. Lightkeeper’s been dead for years, but stormy nights folks still see him out there searching with that green lantern.”
“Don’t you listen to him, honey.” Walter picked up his knife. “He’s just trying to scare you and the boy.”
“Cap’n’s daughter don’t look like she scares too easy to me,” Red observed as I asked the porter for another plate, because I was hungrier than I had ever been, and everything was so delicious. “She sure as hell ain’t seasick.”
“Hard to get seasick on an ice rink,” Roald said. “Tell the men from the boys when the wind begins to howl.”
“She’s a girl,” Walter said.
“Don’t know about that.” Slim set down his fork. “Looks to me like she might have a bit of the old captain in her.”
“And a fine captain he is,” Walter agreed.
“Wears da suit a bit too much if you ask me,” Hans said.
Axel cleared his throat again. It was what he did, I learned, whenever the attention went off him. “You think this is ice? In Green Bay the ice is so thick they used to run stagecoaches from Sturgeon Bay to Menominee twenty miles across the Bay. Marked the road with Christmas trees, even put up a portable hotel halfway across.”
“And Odd better hope that hotel has a bar,” Red said. The men snorted with laughter.
“Never known you to turn down a drink,” Odd shot back. There were little blotches of purple like moss beneath the skin on his nose and cheeks. “Any fool can steer a boat sober. It takes a damn good sailor to navigate drunk.”
“Even the captain’s daughter’ll need a nip when we get to Green Bay.” Roald shuddered. “A drunk at the wheel and a crack in the hull. Not to mention the ghost nobody ever sees. Sometimes I wish I’d picked a different line of work.”
“And what would that be?” Dick Butler said before I had a chance ask about the ghost. “These days ferries got the only jobs there is.”
“That’s the truth. New Deal’s the same old deal up here, as far as I can see,” Odd said.
“Personally I’d rather run ’er through Death’s Door on the ice than when the black flies is biting.” Holgar took a sip of his coffee.
“Course just because they had a stage don’t mean it was safe.” Axel turned to Alv. “Your father ever tell you the story of Hansen and Glass?”
“His father wasn’t around for Hansen and Glass, and neither were you.” Slim scowled. “It’s ancient history.”
“So’s the Hunter Savidge,” Red said. “And that was Huron.”
“What’s the difference?” the bosun snapped. “They’re both sweetwater seas.”
“Wasn’t talkin’ about the Hunter Savidge. I’m talkin’ about Hansen and Glass.”
“Trouble with history is it gets swoggled every time it gets told,” Roald said.
Axel’s face darkened, all except the shiny patch of lavender skin above his lip. “Ain’t nothin’ swoggled about this. Got written up in the paper, that’s how true it is. Lars used to tell that story. Pull that paper out and show it whenever anyone dis
believed him.”
“Who’s Lars?” Alv asked.
Walter shook his head. “Poor sailor. Boxcar jumped the tracks while he was sitting on the apron fence. Fell and broke his neck.”
“Keep talking,” Odd said. “Scare the pretty new boy off, who knows which of you deck apes’ll be bunking with Twitches?”
“Boat’s no place for the fainthearted.” The bosun nodded at the horseshoe nailed above the door. “Don’t catch none of you whistling in the companionways or spitting in the hold. I’m telling you, women and preachers.”
“This little girl here don’t make half a woman,” Walter said.
“Rather bunk with Twitches than a queer,” Dick Butler said. He was an oiler, like Alv’s father, one of the black gang, the men who worked below deck, and he had a somewhat swarthy look that could have come from the ground-in dirt or the fact that he rarely saw the sun. I didn’t like the way he looked at Alv, though later I would learn he was just out of sorts because he’d been passed over for promotion to third engineer. He picked on Alv because Alv was new, just like kids do, or like grown-ups who find an easy target when their real beef is with the world. That was part of it anyway. Years later I would sense something else, but I was much too young to know anything about that then.
“You want to hear this story or not?” Axel didn’t wait for an answer. “Winter ’03. Hansen’s a cigar maker never been to the area before, but he’s got business in Menominee, which is where Glass is headed, so the two men hire themselves a horse and cutter in Sturgeon Bay and set out midafternoon. Now that ice is full of cracks, but they get across ’em all till the last one, still four, five miles out from Menominee . . .”
“Menominee!” I cried. “That’s where we’re going!”
“Jaysus!” Bosun slapped his fork down.
“Nigh on five o’clock, gettin’ toward dark, Bay starts foggin’ up, and that last crack’s a good four-foot wide. Nothin’ to do but get that horse to jump, only his hind feet don’t make it, and instead of pullin’ hisself forward, that dumb horse tries to back up and falls in, two thousand pounds of cement for brains, water cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, and those men got to haul the damn beast out. Then Glass falls in, so Hansen has to fish him out too, but in those wet clothes he’s bound to freeze to death, so Hansen spreads the lap robe on the ice for Glass to stand on, buck naked, while Hansen wrings out his drawers.”
Across the Great Lake Page 4