You could see him seeing himself. It gave you kind of a shock, sometimes. I had never quite got it until then, but I guess Sharkey had from the first. You could see that Snipe knew he was Snipe, just something dropped off the merry-go-round of life that didn’t matter.
Instead of going on with me, he turned at the corner and walked off up the street, his old cap pulled down over his face, his funny, long shoes squidging on the sloppy walk.
It was warm and cheery inside the shack. Sharkey had had the guys rustle up some old papers and nail them over the walls as insulation. When you couldn’t do anything else, you could read the latest news of three months back or look at pictures of Mae West or Myrna Loy, depending if you liked them slim or well upholstered. Most of them looked at Mae West.
The big stove had its belly all red from the heat, and Tony was tipped back in a chair reading the sports. Deek was playing sol at the table, and Jim was standing by in the kitchen watching Red throw a mulligan together. Sharkey had his nose in a book as usual, something about the theory of the leisure class. I had to grin when he showed it to me. We sure were a leisure class, although there wasn’t one of us liked it.
It was nice sitting there. The heat made a fellow kind of drowsy, and the smell of mulligan and coffee was something to write home about. I sat there remembering Snipe walking off up the street through that first spatter of rain, and how the wind whipped his worn old coat.
He was afraid of everything, that guy. Afraid of death, afraid of cops, scared of ship’s officers, and of life, too, I guess. At that, he was luckier than some, for he had a flop. It would be cold and wet on the streets tonight, and there would be men sleeping in boxcars and lumber piles, and other guys walking the streets, wishing they had lumber piles and boxcars to sleep in. But we were lucky, with a shack like this, and we only kept it by working together. In that kind of a life, you got to stick together. It’s the only answer.
Windy Slim was still out on the stem. He never came in early on bad nights, it being easier to pick up a little change when the weather is wet and miserable. Copper was out somewhere, too, and that was unusual, him liking the rain no better than a cat. The drizzle had changed now to a regular downpour, and the wind was blowing a gale.
We all knew what it would be like at sea, with the wind howling through the rigging like a lost banshee and the decks awash with black, glassy water. Sometimes the shack sagged with the weight of the wind, and once Sharkey looked up and glanced apprehensively at the stove.
Then, during a momentary lull, the door jerked open and Slim stomped in, accompanied by a haze of wind and rain that made the lamp spit and almost go out. He shook himself and began pulling off his coat.
“God have pity on the poor sailors on such a night as this!” Jim said, grinning.
“Say—” Slim stopped pulling off his wet clothes and looked at Sharkey. “Brophy and Stallings picked up Copper tonight!”
“The devil they did!” Sharkey put down his book. “What happened?”
“Copper, he bums four bits from some lug down on the docks where he used to work an’ goes to the Greek’s for some chow. He has a hole in his pocket but forgets it. After he eats he finds his money is gone. The Greek hollers for a bull, an’ Brophy comes running, Cap Stallings with him.
“Snipe, he was with Copper when he raised the four bits, but when the bull asks him did Copper have any money, the little rat is so scared he says he don’t know nothing about it. He always was scared of a cop. So they took Copper an’ throwed him in the can.”
“The yellow rat!” Tony said. “An’ after all the feeds Copper staked him to!”
“Why have him here, anyway?” Red said. “He just hangs around. He ain’t any good for anything!”
Me, I sat there and didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything you could say. Outside the wind gathered and hurled a heavy shoulder against the house, the lamp sputtered and gulped, and everybody was quiet. Everybody was thinking what I was thinking, I guess, that Snipe would have to go, but there wasn’t any place for him to go. I tried to read again, but I couldn’t see anything but that spatter of falling rain and Snipe walking away up the street. Red was right, he wasn’t any good for anything, not even himself.
The door opened then, and Snipe came in. It was all in his face, all the bitter defeat and failure of him. That was the worst of it. He knew just what he’d done, knew just what it would mean to that tough, lonely bunch of men who didn’t have any friends but themselves and so had to be good friends to each other. He knew it all, knew just how low he must have sunk, and only felt a little lower himself.
Sharkey didn’t say anything, and the rest of us just sat there. Then Sharkey took a match out of his pocket and handed it to Snipe. Everybody knew what that meant. In the old days on the bum, when the crowd didn’t like a fellow, they gave him a match as a hint to go build his own fire.
Sharkey picked up the poker then and began to poke at the fire. Out in the kitchen everything was quiet. Snipe stood there, looking down at Sharkey’s shoulders, his face white and queer. Then he turned and went out. The sound of the closing door was loud in the room.
The next morning Sharkey and a couple of us drifted down to the big crap game under the P.E. trestle. Everybody was talking about the storm and the ferry to Terminal Island being rammed and sunk during the night. About a dozen lives lost, somebody said.
“Say, Sharkey,” Honolulu said, looking up from the dice. “One of your crowd was on that ferry. That little guy they called Snipe. I saw him boarding her at the landing.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Sharkey looked down at the dice and said nothing. Slim was getting the dice hot and had won a couple of bucks. The lookout got interested, and when all at once somebody hollers “Bull,” there were the cops coming up through the lumberyard.
Two or three of our boys were in the inner circle, and when the yell came, everybody grabbed at the cash. Then we all scattered out, running across the stinking tideflat east of the trestle. I got a fistful of money myself, and there was a lot left behind. I glanced back once, and the cops were picking it up.
The tide wasn’t out yet, and in some places the water was almost knee deep, but it was the only way, and we took it running. I got all wet and muddy but had to laugh, thinking what a funny sight we must have made, about twenty of us splashing through that water as fast as we could pick ’em up and put ’em down.
I was some little time getting back to the shack, and when I did get there, Sharkey was sitting on the steps talking to Windy and Jim. They looked mighty serious, and when I came up, they motioned me to come along and then started back for the trestle.
Thinking maybe they were going back after the money, I told them about the cops getting it, but Slim merely shrugged and said nothing. He had a slug of chewing in his jaw and looked serious as hell.
Finally we got to the mud flat, and though it was still wet, Sharkey started picking his way across. We hadn’t gone far before I could see something ahead, partly buried in the gray mud. It looked like an old sack, or a bundle of dirty clothes. When we got closer I could see it was a body—probably washed in by the tide.
It sort of looked as if the man had been walking in and, when the mud on his feet got too heavy, just laid down. Even before Sharkey stooped to turn his head over, I could see it was Snipe. He had on that old cap of his, and I couldn’t have missed it in a million.
He looked pretty small and pitiful, lying there in the mud mingled with the debris left by an outgoing tide. Once in a while even yet, I think of how he looked, lying there on that stinking mud flat under a low, clouded sky, with a background of lumberyard and trestle. There was mud on the side of his face, and a spot on his nose. His long fingers were relaxed and helpless, but somehow there wasn’t a thing about him that looked out of place. We stood there looking at him a minute, and none of us said anything, but I was thinking: “Well, you were afraid of it, and here it is—now what?”
We left him there and said nothing to anybody. Later, Red saw them down there picking him up but didn’t go near, so we never knew what the coroner thought of it, if anything. I often wonder what happened when that ferry went down. She was hit hard and must have sunk like a rock, with probably fifty or sixty people aboard. It was Snipe’s big chance to be a hero, him being such a good swimmer. But there he was.
As I said to Sharkey, it was a hell of a place to be found dead.
Survival
Tex Worden shoved his way through the crowd in the Slave Market and pushed his book under the wicket.
The clerk looked up, taking in his blistered face and swollen hands. “What’ll you have, buddy? You want to register?”
“Naw, I’m here to play a piano solo, what d’you think?”
“Wise guy, eh?”
Tex’s eyes were cold. “Sure, and what about it?”
“You guys all get too smart when you get ashore. I’m used to you guys, but one of these days I’m going to come out from behind here and kick hell out of one of you!”
“Why not now?” Worden said mildly. “You don’t see me out there running down the street, do you? You just come out from behind that counter, and I’ll lay you in the scuppers.”
At a signal from the man behind the wicket a big man pushed his way through the crowd and tapped Tex Worden on the shoulder. “All right, buddy, take it easy. You take it easy, or you get the boot.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!”
Tex grinned insultingly and turned his back, waiting for the return of his book. The clerk opened it grudgingly, then looked up, startled.
“You were on the Raratonga!”
“So what?”
“We heard only one of the crew was saved!”
“Who the hell do you think I am? Napoleon? And that saved business, that’s the bunk. That’s pure malarkey. I saved myself. Now come on, get that book fixed. I want to get out of here.”
The plainclothes man was interested. “No kiddin’, are you Tex Worden?”
“I am.”
“Hell, man, that must have been some wreck. The papers say that if it wasn’t for you none of them would have gotten back. Dorgan was on that boat, too!”
“Dorgan?” Tex turned to face him. “You know Dorgan?”
“Knew him? I should say I did! A tough man, too. One of the toughest.”
Worden just looked at him. “How tough a man is often depends on where he is and what he’s doing.” He was looking past the plainclothes man, searching for a familiar face. In all this gathering of merchant seamen hunting work, he saw no one.
Times were hard. There were over seven hundred seamen on the beach, and San Pedro had become a hungry town. Jobs were scarce, and a man had to wait his turn. And he didn’t have eating money. Everything he had had gone down with the Raratonga. He had money coming to him, but how long it would be before he saw any of it was a question.
Near the door he glimpsed a slight, bucktoothed seaman in a blue pea jacket whose face looked familiar. He edged through the crowd to him. “Hi, Jack, how’s about staking a guy to some chow?”
“Hey? Don’t I know you? Tex, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. Tex Worden. You were on the West Ivis when I was.”
“Come on, there’s a greasy spoon right down the street.” When they were outside, he said, “I don’t want to get far from the shipping office. My number’s due to come up soon.”
“How long’s it been?”
“Three months. Well, almost that. Times are rough, Tex.” He looked at Worden. “What happened to you?”
“I was on the Raratonga.”
The sailor shook his head in awe. “Jee-sus! You were the only one who came back!”
“Some passengers made it. Not many, but some.”
“How’s it feel to be a hero? And with Hazel Ryan yet. And Price! The actress and the millionaire! You brought them back alive.”
“Me an’ Frank Buck. If this is how it feels to be a hero, you can have it. I’m broke. There’s a hearing today, and maybe I can hit up the commissioner for a few bucks.”
The other seaman thrust out a hand. “I’m Conrad, Shorty Conrad. Paid off a ship from the east coast of South America, and I lied to you. It didn’t take me three months because I’ve got a pal back there. I’ll say a word for you, and maybe you can get a quick ship-out.”
They ordered coffee and hamburger steaks. “This is a tough town, man. No way to get out of this dump unless you can take a pierhead jump or get lucky. If you know a ship’s officer who’ll ask for you, you got a better chance.”
“I don’t know nobody out here. I been shipping off the East Coast.”
A burly Greek came along behind the counter. He stared hard at them. “You boys got money? I hate to ask, but we get stiffed a lot.”
“I got it.” Shorty showed him a handful of silver dollars. “Anyway, this is Tex Worden. He was on the Raratonga.”
“You got to be kiddin’.”
The Greek eyed him with respect. “That where you got blistered?” he motioned toward Worden’s hands. “What happened to them?”
“Knittin’,” Tex said. “Them needles get awful heavy after a while.”
He was tired, very, very tired. The reaction was beginning to set in now. He was so tired he felt he’d fall off the stool if he wasn’t careful, and he didn’t even have the price of a bed. If he hit the sack now, he’d probably pass out for a week. His shoulders ached, and his hands were sore. They hurt when he used them, and they hurt just as much when he didn’t.
“It was a nasty blow, Shorty. You never saw wind like that.”
“She went down quick, eh? I heard it was like fifteen minutes.”
“Maybe. It was real quick. Starb’rd half door give way, and the water poured in; then a bulkhead give way, and the rush of water put the fires out. No power, no pumps—it was a madhouse.”
They were silent, sipping their coffee and eating the greasy steaks. Finally Shorty asked, “How long were you out there?”
“Fifteen days, just a few miles off the equator. It rained once—just in time.”
Faces of men he knew drifted by the door. He knew some of them but could not recall their names. They were faces he’d seen from Hong Kong to Hoboken, from Limehouse to Malay Street in Singapore or Grant Road in Bombay, Gomar Street in Suez, or the old American Bar on Lime Street in Liverpool. He’d started life as a cowboy but now he’d been at sea for fifteen years.
It was a rough crowd out there on Beacon Street, but if he did not know them all, he knew their kind. There were pimps and prostitutes, seamen, fishermen, longshoremen, and bums, but they were all people, and they were all alive, and they were all walking on solid ground.
There were gobs there from the battle wagons off Long Beach and girls who followed the fleet. There was an occasional drunk looking for a live wire who might spring for another bottle, and he liked it.
“Maybe I’ll save my money,” he said aloud, “buy myself a chicken ranch. I’d like to own a chicken ranch near Modesto.”
“Where’s Modesto?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere north of here. I just like the sound of it.”
Tex Worden looked down at his hands. Under the bandages they were swollen with angry red cracks where the blisters had been and some almost raw flesh that had just begun to heal. In the mirror he saw a face like a horror mask, for tough as his hide was, the sun had baked it to an angry red that he could not touch to shave. He looked frightening and felt worse. If only he could get some sleep!
He did not want to think of those bitter, brutal days when he rowed the boat, hour after hour, day after day, rowing with a sullen resignation, all sense of time forgotten, even all sense of motion. There had been no wind for days, just a dead calm, the only movement being the ripples in the wake of the lifeboat.
He got up suddenly. “I almost forgot. I got to stop by the commissioner’s office. They want to ask me some questions. Sort of a preli
minary inquiry, I guess.”
Shorty stole a quick look at him. “Tex—you be careful. Be real careful. These aren’t seamen. They don’t know what it’s like out there. They can’t even imagine.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Be careful, I tell you. I read something about it in the papers. If you ain’t careful they’ll crucify you.”
THERE WERE SEVERAL MEN in business suits in the office when they entered. They all looked at Tex, but the commissioner was the only one who spoke. “Thank you, son. That was a good job you did out there.”
“It was my job,” Tex said. “I done what I was paid for.”
The commissioner dropped into a swivel chair behind his desk. “Now, Worden, I expect you’re tired. We will not keep you any longer than we must, but naturally we must arrive at some conclusions as to what took place out there and what caused the disaster. If there is anything you can tell us, we’d be glad to hear it.”
Shorty stole a glance at the big man with the red face. A company man, here to protect their interests. He knew the type.
“There’s not much to tell, sir. I had come off watch about a half hour before it all happened, and when I went below, everything seemed neat and shipshape. When the ship struck, I was sitting on my bunk in the fo’c’sle taking off my shoes.
“The jolt threw me off the bench, an’ Stu fell off his bunk on top of me. He jumped up an’ said, ‘What the hell happened?’ and I said I didn’t know, but it felt like we hit something. He said, ‘It’s clear enough outside, and we’re way out to sea. Must be a derelict!’ I was pulling on my shoes, and so was he, an’ we ran up on deck.
“There was a lot of running around, and we started forward, looking for the mate. Before we’d made no more than a half-dozen steps, the signal came for boat stations, and I went up on the boat deck. Last I saw of Stu he was trying to break open a jammed door, and I could hear people behind it.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four Page 18