I have made no plans for my future. My decision was merely to leave, to go out to the Far East. There I hope to find a place on some boat in those waters. It will be nothing like this, but some tramp, probably, with a native crew. But I’ll stay out here. I’ve lost my stomach for the States since things went bad for Helen and me. Yet when I see some of these homeless men, I wonder. It is not so bad for Tex Worden. He is a hard-boiled, matter-of-fact sort who lives day to day, does his job, and spends his money quickly. Shorty Conrad is different. He is just the sort one would find clerking in a grocery store or running a garage in some jerkwater town, not the type one would expect to find at sea. He has a sister somewhere, he tells me, and is looking for her. They were parted as children.
Most of them are men without women. At least, men without women in the larger sense. Their attachments are casual and women have little influence on their lives. But that is always true of such men. One wonders just how much influence women have upon the lives of explorers, drifters, warriors, and seamen. Many are married, but usually they are far from home. In many cases their lives are intervals of dissipation between long periods that are isolated and monastic. In many cases even those intervals of dissipation are so brief as to mean little.
Pete, who has followed the sea for many years, has no wish to be an officer or even bo’sun. His life is in the fo’c’stle. He is a quiet fellow, of simple tastes, and one who knows more of seamanship than any other man on the boat, not excepting our chief mate, Mr. Shannon. Shorty, I believe, has no great ambitions. His greatest pleasure seems to be just mingling with the crew, playing poker (he rarely wins), singing, and listening to Denny McGuire’s endless stories, which I too have found easy, and entertaining, to do.
So I end my journal for another day. We are changing our course on the morrow, which means a little more work for me. But navigation appeals to me. As on many of these ships, the second mate is actually the navigating officer. Man may see his future in the heavens but those same stars are also the key to our more mundane destinations here on earth.
SHORTY CONRAD
Able Seaman
After three bells sounded he kept on painting, taking his time and doing a careful job. Occasionally he straightened up to look at the hull of the lifeboat, and each time the paint showed smooth and even, with not a holiday or a run in sight. He squatted on his haunches and dipped the brush in the white paint, scraped the surplus off on the edge of the can, and began lower down. Then after a few minutes he stood up, laid the brush carefully across the pot, and, turning to the ladder, dropped quickly to the main deck.
Whistling, he walked aft to the washroom next to the seaman’s fo’c’stle. When he returned the saltwater soap and towel to his locker, he glanced out the port. A school of flying fish, their bright scales glinting in the sunlight, scudded by. The light reflected off tiny pinnacles of water and ran shimmering along the sea to bubble up in dancing waves. He closed his locker carefully and started forward along the catwalk.
Climbing the ladder to the bridge, he stopped, looking back along the wake. There was not a cloud in the sky; the sea danced with blue and the mingled gold of sunlight. For all one knew the sea went on and on, past all the little islands and the big continents, past the sandy beaches and the jagged reefs, along lonely shores, and around old wrecks…forever. His father would tell him that when he was a little boy, going on and on as he drifted off to sleep. He went up the last few steps and came face-to-face with Mr. Harlan. Shorty grinned. “Swell day, ain’t it?”
“Beautiful,” Mr. Harlan said, glancing back. “Reminds me of spring when I was a kid. The snow melting and running down the gutters in little brooks, and you feel sort of lazy and warm.”
Shorty leaned on the rail. “Sis an’ me used to go out and sail paper boats or build dams in the water. We’d get our feet wet an’ get bawled out plenty by Mrs. Haley!”
Shorty stepped through the door of the wheelhouse, and Pete glanced down at the compass, bringing the wheel up a couple of spokes to put her dead on the course. “Two six-two,” Pete said, watching the compass tip slightly, wavering on the course, “two sixty-two, and vee are right on!”
“Two sixty-two it is!” Shorty said, faking a snappy salute. “You’ll find a pot of paint an’ a brush on the boat deck just abeam of number 3 lifeboat. Shannon says to finish that an’ then start on number 4.”
Pete disappeared through the starb’rd door, and Shorty could hear his feet descending the ladder to the Old Man’s deck. He glanced down at the compass, gave the wheel a spoke, and looked out at the sea. The forestay was a thin black thread against the sky, a thread that moved slowly with the motion of the ship. Following it down with his eye, he could see the point of the bow and the thin pencil of the jackstaff.
Mr. Harlan passed by, walking across the bridge, then pausing to level his glasses toward some distant object, scarcely discernible on the skyline. For a moment, he held still, then he lowered the glasses and walked to the wing of the bridge. Below, in the radio room, Shorty could hear Sparks at work, and tried to pick out the signals, but the code was only a tangled mass of sound to him, jumping and leaping.
Harlan stepped into the wheelhouse and stood looking out the windows over the sea. He was about medium height, slender but with well-set shoulders. He had a quiet, pleasant face, with laughter never far from his grave eyes, but his humor was the sort that usually stayed inside, only visible once you got to know him. Shorty watched the man, liking his efficient manner, always so smooth and faultless, but without any of the priggish pomp of the third mate.
“Say”—Shorty glanced at the compass again, easing the wheel gently—“do we pass anywhere close to Wake Island?”
“No, Wake will be off to the south of us, quite some distance. The closest land before we sight the Philippines will be the Marianas.”
“Japanese, aren’t they?”
Harlan nodded. “Japanese Mandate. After we pass them we’ll be over some of the deepest water in the world.”
“Guess it don’t make much difference,” Shorty said. “A guy can drown just as easy in ten feet as ten miles!”
Harlan went into the chart room, and then after a few minutes returned to the windows looking out over the bridge at the sea. “Ever been to Manila before?” he asked.
“Yeah, I was there on an Isthmian boat, the Steel Engineer. That was about ten years ago. I met Pete out by the Paco cemetery. We got drunk and slept there all night.”
“You two been shipping together ever since?”
“No, we made one trip that time. He wanted to go to Amsterdam, so he shipped out of Hoboken for Liverpool, figuring to get a Dutch boat from there. I went back to the West Coast, then down to Antofagasta. Didn’t see him again for six years. We ran into each other in the Straits Hotel in Singapore.”
“He’s been going home a long time.”
“Uh-huh. Sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever make it. I guess we all want something we don’t get.”
Harlan nodded, without turning, his eyes on the horizon. “What do you want, Shorty?”
“Me? I don’t know. To find my sister, I guess. She’s the only relative I got, unless my old man’s alive somewhere. Then maybe a little place ashore somewhere.”
“How’d you lose track of her?”
“She was adopted by some show folks used to know my dad an’ mom. She went back East with them, an’ later I heard they went to London. A guy who sold patent medicine took me. I ain’t never seen nor heard of her since. Maybe she changed her name, got married, I don’t know.”
John Harlan walked out on deck, and Shorty held the course, watching the numbered degrees on the compass. When he’d started going to sea everyone steered by points, and now they were all beginning to steer by degrees. It didn’t make much difference, only going through the old “boxing the compass” routine wasn’t so important anymore.
Shorty watched the sunlight on the water and listened to the measured tick of the chronometer. Memories were slippery things. A good deal of what happened vanished somehow, and a guy only remembered so much, odds and ends that didn’t seem to have any earthly connection. That was the way it was with his folks. He remembered his father best on that last day, packing his things, eager to be off. Every minute or so he’d stop and start explaining to Marie again, telling her how it was his one chance to strike it rich. And Shorty remembered his mother standing very quietly, watching him. Maybe she guessed she’d never see him again.
* * *
—
Raoul Carmody had been a handsome young man. Said to be brilliant and temperamental, he had very large, magnetic, black eyes. His voice was low, and his black hair curled away from his high forehead in a careful wave. A great actor, some claimed, but erratic. Always committing to some new enthusiasm with which he was carried away. Marie Carmody had married him in Melbourne, where they were both in the cast of an Ibsen play. For a time their star had soared high, and then during a lull while visiting the United States, they had gone out with a road show. But they had spent too freely, and when the show began to play to smaller and smaller crowds the Carmodys didn’t have the wherewithal to leave.
The company had been staggering along for several weeks when it reached Merivale, and two nights at the Merivale Opera House failed to solve the anemic state of their finances. The show folded and the manager promptly eloped with the ingénue and the little remaining capital.
Raoul Carmody, despite having sixteen years in dramatic stock behind him, was only in his middle thirties, a handsome, aristocratic-seeming young man whose dark eyes brought a flutter to the pulses of the rotund Mrs. Haley. As Mrs. Haley was the proprietor of the town’s best boardinghouse, those soul-searching glances were not without their value. Especially comforting was the fact that she was a romantic, middle-aged lady content merely to bask in the reflected aura of such a presence.
Marie Carmody, the burnished copper of her hair lighting the rooms of the rambling old frame house, was no less welcome. The fact that Marie was an artist at preparing mysteriously tasty foreign dishes, and that she was always ready to make herself useful, probably had as much to do with Mrs. Haley’s hesitation in presenting a bill as Raoul Carmody’s magnificent voice and eyes. Conrad, who was a matter-of-fact, worldly little fellow, and Faustine, who was two and a picture of round-eyed innocence, also won a place in Mrs. Haley’s affections.
As the days passed, the rest of the company drifted away. Marie began selling tickets for the local opera house, and Raoul fell into the company of a tall, harsh-featured man named Tracey. Shortly after, he returned one night to tell his wife he was going to South America. There was a wild and almost unbelievable story about lost treasure and a map, just the sort of story to appeal to Raoul Carmody’s romantic nature. Hastily, he packed and was gone. The family never saw him again.
Shorty moved the wheel thoughtfully, remembering those two years in Merivale, two years when they had hoped day after day to see his father coming home. At first there had been letters, one from New Orleans, another from Cartagena, and after that silence, until one day a soiled and worn message arrived postmarked Ushuaia, a place on the extreme southern tip of South America. The message, Raoul said, would be taken by a native to the nearest town. They had been successful. He would soon be home. And that was all.
Then, in the belated backwash of the great flu epidemic, Marie Carmody died. Bon and Dorothy Malloch, old friends of the Carmodys, had taken Faustine, who was already a beautiful child. They had no place for Conrad. But a month later, Doc Dunlap and his medicine show reached town, and Doc, in his smoothest manner, impressed Mrs. Haley with a story of the fine home he could give Conrad; and when he left, the boy went with him. Doc Dunlap had filled the boy with glowing promises for the future, and colorful accounts of life on the road selling Chief Hollowoll’s Indian Herb Remedy.
Afterward, Shorty decided the only surprising thing about Doc Dunlap was that the promises lasted a full week. Conrad soon found that neither Doc nor his peroxide-blond wife had any inclination toward work. Setting up the platform for the shows, distributing advertising, and even mixing the Indian Herb Remedy soon fell completely on the boy’s shoulders. In the years that followed, he also learned to do a hot “buck and wing” and to play the guitar.
Doc’s round red face grew more and more surly, and he drank more and more. Income fell off steadily, and once they were laid up in a tourist park in Plainview, Texas, for two solid weeks while Doc Dunlap stayed drunk. Bella was almost as bad, and she drifted from having secretive affairs with various men into openly flaunting them in Doc’s face.
Then one day it all ended. Doc Dunlap and his trailer were camped on the shore of a small lake near Post, Texas. Doc had taken a suitcase of the Indian Herb Remedy, crawled into the car, and driven off downtown, leaving Conrad and Bella to straighten up the trailer and mix some more of his specialty.
It had been a cool, pleasant afternoon, and Shorty recalled every detail of what happened. He had lugged a heavy bucket of water into the trailer and was carefully preparing to mix The Remedy when he heard voices. Bella, in a flaming crimson kimono, had been sitting on the steps, but now she was gone. Glancing out, the boy saw her standing very close to a tall, rawboned man with a thin, hard face. He remembered the man very well indeed. He had first seen him two weeks before, in Lubbock. He had walked away with Bella that night after Doc had passed out. Conrad had seen him again in Slaton, and now he was here. As he watched, they went into the stranger’s trailer.
A few minutes later, staggering and drunk, Doc returned. He lurched up the steps, his face swollen and red, his eyes ugly. “Where’s Bella?” he snarled.
Without thinking, Conrad pointed. “Over there,” he said.
With a curse, Doc Dunlap half-fell, half-stumbled down the steps, and then he started weaving toward the neighboring trailer, mumbling under his breath.
His mouth dry and his throat tight, Conrad crept silently after him, afraid to go for fear of what might happen yet too curious to stay behind.
Eyes wide, he saw Doc lurch up the steps and jerk open the door. Peering past him, Conrad could see Bella lying beside the stranger on the narrow bed. The stranger drew himself to one elbow, his eyes narrow and dangerous. “Get out,” he said, his voice emotionless. “Get out, you fatheaded fool, or I’ll kill you!”
Doc began to swear. The man suddenly sat up, and Doc, his face white with fear, had stumbled and fallen heavily down the steps. Inside, they heard laughter. Conrad turned and ran blindly for the trailer. He was working over his mixture when Doc came in. The man’s eyes were thin with hatred and suspicion.
“What you prowlin’ around for?” he snarled. “I’ll teach you a thing or two, you filthy good-for-nothing!” He jerked up a broom that sat by the door and crashed the stick down across the boy’s shoulders. Conrad staggered and backed away, but Doc Dunlap lurched after him, swinging viciously at the boy’s face. He missed, and the stick crashed into the ceiling in the narrow confines of the trailer and snapped. Doc staggered and almost fell. Lunging forward, he grabbed the broken broomstick and struck the boy over the head. Then he began to beat him, pounding Conrad with furious blows, venting all his hatred and cowardice.
It was a long time later that Conrad became conscious. Dimly, he remembered being struck over the head, and then the sensation of falling. Slowly, he crawled to his feet. Doc Dunlap lay across the bed in a drunken stupor, his face red and bloated, his breath hoarse. There was no sign of Bella.
Moving quietly, the boy limped to a built-in cupboard and found a sack needle and some coarse thread. He returned to the bed and picked up Doc’s feet, laying them out in line with his body. Then carefully, he drew the sheet tight around the man’s body and began to sew. In a few minutes the sheet formed a tight white sheath in which Doc Dunlap could not
move a muscle. The man’s eyes were just opening when Conrad Carmody stopped and picked up the broken broomstick from the floor where it had fallen. Lifting the stick, he brought it down across Doc’s rump with all the force he could muster, and then, with all the beatings he had taken from Doc Dunlap floating through his mind, Conrad gave the man such a whipping as he would never have again.
At the wheel of the SS Lichenfield, Shorty Conrad grinned. Served him right, the old devil, he thought. If ever a man had a licking coming, that drunken old beer-belly did. Shorty remembered how he had only stopped when his arms became weary. Then he had picked up his few belongings and left the trailer. He started west and kept going. As far as he knew, Doc Dunlap was still right where he left him.
It was after that affair that Shorty had dropped the surname but retained the Conrad. The “Shorty” had been acquired in the natural course of events; somehow, it had become the custom on labor jobs, in mines, and at sea, to call all the tall men “Slim” and the short ones “Shorty.” And often enough they were neither very slim in the one case, nor very short in the other.
Harlan came in from the bridge as Shorty rang seven bells. He walked into the chart room, and glancing over his shoulder Shorty could see him figuring on a slip of paper. Finally, Harlan returned to the wheelhouse and walked back to his station at the windows where he could watch the sea.
“Have you shipped out in the Far East?” Harlan asked. “I mean from Far Eastern ports?”
“Me?” Shorty said. “No. I haven’t.”
“I was just wondering. It might be interesting to know those waters better.”
“I’ll bet Denny could tell you about that. He sailed out of Shanghai several times, an’ out of Batavia an’ Singapore, too. Maybe Pete could, I don’t know.”
No Traveller Returns (Lost Treasures) Page 12