“Lila had passed out; spray was whipping over the boat. I was hanging to that tiller, scared ever’ time a big one came over that it would be the last of us. There was no way to play. You just had to live from one sea to the next.”
“How long did the storm last?”
“About two days. I don’t rightly remember because I was so tired everything was hazy. When the sea calmed down enough, I let Schwartz have the tiller. I’d been gripping it so hard and so long I could hardly let go.”
“You were at the tiller forty-eight hours without relief?”
“Yes, sir. Maybe a bit more. But after that she began to settle down, and the sun came out.”
“The boat was provisioned according to regulations?”
“Yes, sir. We’d some trouble about water later but not much.”
“How about the crew and the officers? Were they efficient, in your opinion?”
“Sure. Yes, they were okay. I’ve been going to sea quite a spell, and I never have seen any seaman or officer shirk his job. It ain’t bravery nor lack of it, just that he knows his job and has been trained for it.
“Sometimes you hear about the crew rushing the boats or being inefficient. I don’t believe it ever happens. They’re trained for the job, and it is familiar to them. They know what they are to do, and they do it.
“Passengers are different. All of a sudden everything is different. There’s turmoil an’ confusion; there’s folks runnin’ back and forth, and the passengers don’t know what’s going on.
“Sometimes one of them will grab a crewman and yell something at him, and the crewman will pull loose and go about his business. The passenger gets mad and thinks they’ve been deserted by the crew when chances are that seaman had something to do. Maybe his boat station was elsewhere. Maybe he’d been sent with a message for the engineer on watch below.
“Maybe those crewmen you hear about rushing the boats are just getting there to get the boat cover off and clear the falls. This wasn’t my first wreck, and I’ve yet to see a crewman who didn’t stand by.”
“How long before she sank?”
“Fifteen minutes, give or take a few. It surely wasn’t more, though. It might have been no more than five. We’d made quite a bit of water before the cargo shifted and she heeled over. With that half door underwater—well, I figure that door gave way and she just filled up and sank.”
“Mr. Commissioner?” Winstead asked. “I’d like permission to ask this man a few questions. There are a few matters I’d like to clear up.”
“Go ahead.”
“Now, my man, if you’d be so kind. How many were in the boat when you got away from the scene of the wreck?”
“Eight.”
“Yet when you were picked up by the Maloaha there were but three?”
“Yes.”
“How do you account for that?”
“Lila—she was the stewardess—she died. Like I said, she’d been hurt inside. She was a mighty good woman, and I hated to see her go. Clarkson—he went kind of screwy. Maybe he didn’t have all his buttons to start with. Anyway, he got kind of wild and kept staring at a big shark who was following us. One night he grabbed up a boat hook and tried to get that shark. It was silly. That shark was just swimmin’ along in hopes. No use to bother him. Well, he took a stab at that shark and fell over the side.
“Handel, he just sat an’ stared. Never made no word for anybody, just stared. He must’ve sat that way for eight or nine days. We all sort of lost track of time, but he wouldn’t take water, wouldn’t eat a biscuit. He just sat there, hands hanging down between his knees.
“I’d rigged a sort of mast from a drifting stick and part of a boat cover. The mast this boat should have carried was missing. Anyway, the little sail I rigged gave us some rest, and it helped. Late one day we were moving along at a pretty fair rate for us when I saw a squall coming. She swept down on us so quick that I gave the tiller to Schwartz and stumbled forward to get that sail down before we swamped. With the wind a-screaming and big seas rolling up, I’d almost reached the sail when this Handel went completely off his course. He jumped up and grabbed me, laughing and singing, trying to dance with me or something.
“Struggling to get free, I fell full length in the boat, scrambled up and pulled that sail down, and when I looked around, Handel was gone.”
“Gone?” Winstead said.
“You mean—over the side?” the commissioner asked.
“That’s right. Nearest thing I could figure out was that when I fell, he fell, too. Only when I fell into the bottom, he toppled over the side.
“Rain and blown spray was whipping the sea, and we couldn’t see him. No chance to turn her about. We’d have gone under had we tried.
“For the next ten hours we went through hell, just one squall after another, and all of us had to bail like crazy just to keep us afloat.”
“So,” Winstead said, “you killed a passenger?”
“I never said that. I don’t know what happened. Whatever it was, it was pure accident. I’d nothing against the man. He was daffy, but until that moment he’d been harmless. I figure he didn’t mean no harm then, only I had to get free of him to save the boat.”
“At least, that is your story?”
“Mister, with a ragin’ squall down on us there was no time to coddle nobody. I didn’t have a straitjacket nor any way to get him into one. It was save the boat or we’d all drown.”
“Yet even with your small sail up, you might have lasted, might you not?”
Worden considered the matter, then he shrugged. “No way to tell. I was the only seaman aboard, and it was my judgment the sail come down. I’d taken it down.”
“All right. We will let that rest for the moment. That accounts for three. Now what became of the other two?”
“The Jew—Schwartz, he come to me in the night a few days later. We were lyin’ in a dead calm, and most of our water was gone. Sky was clear, not a cloud in sight, and we’d a blazin’ hot day ahead. He told me he was goin’ over the side, and he wanted me to know because he didn’t want me to think he was a quitter.
“Hell, that little kike had more guts than the whole outfit. I told him nothing doing. Told him I needed him, which was no lie. It was a comfort just to have him there because what he didn’t know he could understand when I told him. He wouldn’t accept the fact that I needed him.
“It even came to the point where I suggested I toss a coin with him to see who went over. He wouldn’t listen to that, and we both knew I was talkin’ nonsense. I was the only seaman. The only one who could handle a boat. It was my job to bring that boat back with as many people as possible. I ain’t goin’ for any of that hero stuff. That’s all baloney. Sure, I wanted to live as much as any man, but I had a job to do. It was what I signed on to do. At least when I signed on, it was to do a seaman’s job. I ain’t done nothing I wouldn’t do again.”
“I see. And what became of the other man?”
“He was a big guy, and he was tough. He tried to take charge of the boat. There’s a lot happens in an open boat like that when everybody is close to shovin’ off for the last time. People just ain’t thinkin’ the way they should. This big guy, he had more stamina than the rest of them. Most of them tried to take a hand in rowin’ the boat.
“We’d no wind, you see, and I was hopin’ we could get out of the calm into the wind again, but he wouldn’t do anything. He just sat. He said I was crazy, that I was goin’ the wrong way. He said I drank water at night when they were all asleep. Twice when I passed water forward for somebody else, he drank it.
“Then one night I woke up with him pourin’ the last of our water down his damn throat. The Ryan woman, she was tuggin’ at his arm to try to stop him, but hell, it was too late.
“It was her callin’ to me that woke me up, and I went at him. He emptied
the cask and threw it over the side. I tried to stop him, and we had it out, right there. He was some bigger than me and strong, but there was no guts to him. I smashed him up some and put him between the oars. I told him to row, that he’d live as long as he rowed. First we had to circle around and pick up the cask.”
“An empty cask?” Winstead asked incredulously. “What in God’s world did you do that for?”
“Mister, it’s only in the movies where some guy on the desert an’ dyin’ of thirst throws away a canteen because it’s empty. Shows how little some of those screenwriters know. Supposin’ he finds water next day? How’s he goin’ to carry it?
“You throw away an empty canteen in the desert an’ you’re committin’ suicide. Same thing out there. We might get a rain squall, and if we did, we’d need something to hold water. So we circled and picked up that cask.”
“And what happened to Dorgan?”
Tex Worden’s face was bleak. “He quit rowin’ twenty-four hours before we got picked up.”
Winstead turned to the commissioner. “Sir, this man has admitted to killing one passenger; perhaps he killed two or three. As to his motives—I think they will appear somewhat different under cross-examination.
“I have evidence as to this man’s character. He is known along the waterfronts as a tough. He frequents houses of ill fame. He gets into drunken brawls. He has been arrested several times for fighting. His statements here today have cast blame upon the company. I intend to produce evidence that this man is not only a scoundrel but an admitted murderer!”
Tex sat up slowly.
“Yes, I’ve been arrested for fighting. Sometimes when I come ashore after a long cruise I have a few too many, and sometimes I fight, but it’s always with my own kind. After a trip on one of those louse-bound scows of yours, a man has to get drunk. But I’m a seaman. I do my job. There’s never a man I’ve worked with will deny that. I’m sorry you weren’t in that boat with us so you could have seen how it was.
“You learn a lot about people in a lifeboat. Me, I never claimed to be any psalm singer. Maybe the way I live isn’t your way, but when the time comes for the men to step out, I’ll be there. I’ll be doin’ my job.
“It’s easy to sit around on your fat behinds and say what you’d have done or what should have been done. You weren’t there.
“Nobody knows what he’d do until he’s in the spot. I was the only guy in that boat knew a tiller from a thwart. It was me bring that boat through or nobody. I’d rather lose two than lose them all. I wasn’t doin’ it because it was swell of me or because they’d call me a hero. I was bringin’ them in because it was my job.
“Handel now. He wasn’t responsible. Somethin’ happened to him that he never expected. He could have lived his life through a nice, respected man, but all of a sudden it isn’t the same anymore. There’s nobody to tell to do something or to even ask. He’s caught in a place he can’t see his way out of. He’d never had just to endure, and there was nothing in him to rise to the surface and make him stand up. It sort of affected his mind.
“Hazel Ryan? She has moxie. When I told her it was her turn to row, she never hesitated, and I had to make her quit. She wasn’t all that strong, but she was game. A boatload like her an’ I could have slept halfway back.
“Dorgan was a bad apple. The whole boat was on edge because of him. He’d been used to authority and was a born bully. He was used to takin’ what he wanted an’ lettin’ others cry about it. I told him what he had to do, and he did it after we had our little set-to.”
“Who did you think you were, Worden? God? With the power of life and death?”
“Listen, mister”—Worden leaned forward—“when I’m the only seaman in the boat, when we have damn’ little water, an’ we’re miles off the steamer lanes, when there’s heat, stillness, thirst, an’ we’re sittin’ in the middle of a livin’ hell, you can just bet I’m Mister God as far as that boat’s concerned.
“The company wasn’t there to help. You weren’t there to help, nor was the commissioner. Sure, the little fat guy prayed, an’ Clarkson prayed. Me, I rowed the boat.”
He lifted his hands, still swollen and terribly lacerated where the blisters had broken to cracks in the raw flesh. “Forty hours,” he said, “there at the end I rowed for forty hours, tryin’ to get back where we might be picked up. We made it.
“We made it,” he repeated, “but there was a lot who didn’t.”
The commissioner rose, and Winstead gathered his papers, his features set and hard. He threw one quick, measuring glance at Worden.
“That will be all, gentlemen,” the commissioner said. “Worden, you will remain in port until this is straightened out. You are still at the same address?”
“Yes, sir. At the Seaman’s Institute.”
Shorty glanced nervously out the window, then at Winstead. Tex turned away from the desk, a tall, loose figure in a suit that no longer fit. Winstead left, saying nothing, but as Worden joined Shorty, the commissioner joined them.
“Worden?”
“Yes, sir?”
“As man to man—and I was once a seaman myself—Mr. Winstead has a lot of influence. He will have the best attorney money can hire, and to a jury off the shore things do not look the same as in a drifting lifeboat.
“The Lichenfield docked a few minutes ago, and she will sail after refueling. I happen to know they want two ABs. This is unofficial, of course. The master of the vessel happens to be a friend of mine.”
They shook hands briefly.
There was a faint mist falling when they got outside. Tex turned up his coat collar. Shorty glanced toward Terminal Island. “You got an outfit? Some dungarees an’ stuff?”
“I’d left a sea bag at the Institute.” He touched the blue shirt. “This was in it. I can draw some gear from the slop chest.”
“They got your tail in a crack, Tex. What’s next, the Lichenfield?”
“Well,” he said shortly, “I don’t make my living in no courtroom.”
SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME
IT WAS THE night the orchestra played “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” the night the fleet sailed for Panama. The slow drizzle of rain had stopped, and there was nothing but the play of searchlights across the clouds, the mutter of the motors from the shore boats, and the spatter of grease where the man was frying hamburgers on the Fifth Street landing. I was standing there with a couple of Greek fishermen and a taxi driver, watching the gobs say good-bye to their wives and sweethearts.
There was something about the smell of rain, the sailors saying good-bye, and the creak of rigging that sort of got to you. I’d been on the beach for a month then.
A girl came down to the landing and leaned on the rail watching the shore boats. One of the gobs waved at her, and she waved back, but didn’t smile. You could see that they didn’t know each other; it was just one of those things.
She was alone. Every other girl was with somebody, but not her. She was wearing a neat, tailored suit that was a little worn, but she had nice legs and large, expressive eyes. When the last of the shore boats was leaving she was still standing there. Maybe it wasn’t my move, but I was lonely, and when you’re on the beach you don’t meet many girls. So I walked over and leaned on the rail beside her.
“Saying good-bye to your boyfriend?” I asked, though I knew she wasn’t.
“I said good-bye to him a long time ago.”
“He didn’t come back?”
“Do they ever?”
“Sometimes they want to and can’t. Sometimes things don’t break right.”
“I wonder.”
“And sometimes they do come back and things aren’t like they were, and sometimes they don’t come back because they are afraid they won’t be the same, and they don’t want to spoil what they remember.”
“Then why go?”
“Somebody has to. Men have always gone to sea, and girls have waited for them.”
“I’m not waiting for anybody.”
“Sure you are. We all are. From the very beginning we wait for somebody, watch for them long before we know who they are. Sometimes we find the one we wait for, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes the one we wait for comes along and we don’t know it until too late. Sometimes they ask too much and we are afraid to take a chance, and they slip away.”
“I wouldn’t wait for anyone. Especially him. I wouldn’t want him now.”
“Of course not. If you saw him now, you’d wonder why you ever wanted him. You aren’t waiting for him, though—you’re waiting for what he represented. You knew a sailor once. Girls should never know men who have the sea in their blood.”
“They always go away.”
“Sure, and that’s the way it should be. All the sorrow and tragedy in life come from trying to make things last too long.”
“You’re a cynic.”
“All sentimentalists are cynics, and all Americans are sentimentalists. It’s the Stephen Foster influence. Or too many showings of ‘Over the Hill to the Poorhouse’ and ‘East Lynne.’ But I like it that way.”
“Do people really talk like this?”
“Only when they need coffee. Or maybe the first time a girl and a man meet. Or maybe this talk is a result of the saying-good-bye influence. It’s the same thing that makes women cry at the weddings of perfect strangers.”
“You’re a funny person.” She turned to look at me.
“I boast of it. But how about that coffee? We shouldn’t stand here much longer. People who lean on railings over water at night are either in love or contemplating suicide.”
We started up the street. This was the sort of thing that made life interesting—meeting people. Especially attractive blondes at midnight.
Yondering: Stories Page 7