1919 (5 page)

Joe didn't say anything. After a while he said, “Jeez, an' when I was a kid I thought I wanted to go to the tropics.”

“This ain't tropics, it's a bleedin' 'ell 'ole, that's what it is.”

They took another couple of turns. Joe went and leaned over the side looking down into the greasy blackness. God damn these mosquitoes. When he spat out his plug of tobacco it made a light plunk in the water. He went down into the focastle again, crawled into his bunk and pulled the blanket over his head and lay there sweating. “Darn it, I wanted to see the baseball scores.”

 

Next day they coaled ship and the day after they had Joe painting the officers' cabins while the
Argyle
nosed out through the Boca again between the slimegreen ferny islands, and he was sore because he had A.B. papers and here they were still treating him like an ordinary seaman and he was going to England and didn't know what he'd do when he'd get there, and his shipmates said they'd likely as not run him into a concentraytion camp; bein' an alien and landin' in England without a passport, wat wit' war on and 'un spies everywhere, an' all; but the breeze had salt in it now and when he peeked out of the porthole he could see blue ocean instead of the puddlewater off Trinidad and flying fish in hundreds skimming away from the ship's side.

The harbor at St. Luce's was clean and landlocked, white houses with red roofs under the coconutpalms. It turned out that it was bananas they were going to load; it took them a day and a half knocking up partitions in the afterhold and scantlings for the bananas to hang from. It was dark by the time they'd come alongside the bananawharf and had rigged the two gangplanks and the little derrick for lowering the bunches into the hold. The wharf was crowded with colored women laughing and shrieking and yelling things at the crew, and big buck niggers standing round doing nothing. The women did the loading. After a while they started coming up one gangplank, each one with a huge green bunch of bananas slung on her head and shoulders; there were old black mammies and pretty young mulatto
girls; their faces shone with sweat under the big bunchlights, you could see their swinging breasts hanging down through their ragged clothes, brown flesh through a rip in a sleeve. When each woman got to the top of the gangplank two big buck niggers lifted the bunch tenderly off her shoulders, the foreman gave her a slip of paper and she ran down the other gangplank to the wharf again. Except for the donkeyengine men the deck crew had nothing to do. They stood around uneasy, watching the women, the glitter of white teeth and eyeballs, the heavy breasts, the pumping motion of their thighs. They stood around, looking at the women, scratching themselves, shifting their weight from one foot to the other; not even much smut was passed. It was a black still night, the smell of the bananas and the stench of niggerwoman sweat was hot around them; now and then a little freshness came in a whiff off some cases of limes piled on the wharf.

Joe caught on that Tiny was waving to him to come somewhere. He followed him into the shadow. Tiny put his mouth against his ear, “There's bleedin' tarts 'ere, Yank, come along.” They went up the bow and slid down a rope to the wharf. The rope scorched their hands. Tiny spat into his hands and rubbed them together. Joe did the same. Then they ducked into the warehouse. A rat scuttled past their feet. It was a guano warehouse and stank of fertilizer. Outside a little door in the back it was pitch black, sandy underfoot. A little glow from streetlights hit the upper part of the warehouse. There were women's voices, a little laugh. Tiny had disappeared. Joe had his hand on a woman's bare shoulder. “But first you must give me a shilling,” said a sweet cockney West India woman's voice. His voice had gone hoarse. “Sure, cutie, sure I will.”

When his eyes got used to the dark he could see that they weren't the only ones. There were giggles, hoarse breathing all round them. From the ship came the intermittent whir of the winches, and a mixedup noise of voices from the women loading bananas.

The woman was asking for money. “Come on now, white boy, do like you say.” Tiny was standing beside him buttoning up his pants. “Be back in a jiff, girls.”

“Sure, we left our jack on board the boat.”

They ran back through the warehouse with the girls after them, up the jacobsladder somebody had let down over the side of the ship and landed on deck out of breath and doubled up with laughing. When
they looked over the side the women were running up and down the wharf spitting and cursing at them like wildcats. “Cheeryoh, laydies,” Tiny called down to them, taking off his cap. He grabbed Joe's arm and pulled him along the deck; they stood round a while near the end of the gangplank. “Say, Tiny, yours was old enough to be your grandmother, damned if she wasn't,” whispered Joe. “Granny me eye, it was the pretty un I 'ad.” “The hell you say . . . She musta been sixty.” “Wot a bleedin' wopper . . . it was the pretty un I 'ad,” said Tiny, walking off sore.

A moon had come up red from behind the fringed hills. The bananabunches the women were carrying up the gangplank made a twisting green snake under the glare of the working lights. Joe suddenly got to feeling disgusted and sleepy. He went down and washed himself carefully with soap and water before crawling into his bunk. He went to sleep listening to the Scotch and British voices of his shipmates, talking about the tarts out back of the wharfhouse, 'ow many they'd 'ad, 'ow many times, 'ow it stacked up with the Argentyne or Durban or Singapore. The loading kept up all night.

By noon they'd cleared for Liverpool with the Chief stoking her up to make a fast passage and all hands talking about the blighty. They had bananas as much as they could eat that trip; every day the supercargo was bringing up overripe bunches and hanging them in the galley. Everybody was grousing about the ship not being armed, but the Old Man and Mr. McGregor seemed to take on more about the bananas than about the raiders. They were always peeping down under the canvas cover over the hatch that had been rigged with a ventilator on the peak of it, to see if they were ripening too soon. There was a lot of guying about the blahsted banahnas down in the focastle.

After crossing the tropic they ran into a nasty norther that blew four days, after that the weather was dirty right along. Joe didn't have much to do after his four hours at the wheel; in the focastle they were all grousing about the ship not being fumigated to kill the bugs and the cockroaches and not being armed and not picking up a convoy. Then word got around that there were German submarines cruising off the Lizard and everybody from the Old Man down got short tempered as hell. They all began picking on Joe on account of America's not being in the war and he used to have long arguments with Tiny and an old fellow from Glasgow they called Haig. Joe said he didn't
see what the hell business the States had in the war and that almost started a fight.

After they picked up the Scilly Island lights, Sparks said they were in touch with a convoy and would have a destroyer all to themselves up through the Irish Sea that wouldn't leave them until they were safe in the Mersey. The British had won a big battle at Mons. The Old Man served out a tot of rum all round and everybody was in fine shape except Joe who was worried about what'd happen to him getting into England without a passport. He was chilly all the time on account of not having any warm clothes.

That evening a destroyer loomed suddenly out of the foggy twilight, looking tall as a church above the great wave of white water curling from her bows. It gave them a great scare on the bridge because they thought at first it was a Hun. The destroyer broke out the Union Jack and slowed down to the
Argyle's
speed, keeping close and abreast of her. The crew piled out on deck and gave the destroyer three cheers. Some of them wanted to sing
God Save the King
but the officer on the bridge of the destroyer began bawling out the Old Man through a megaphone asking him why in bloody f—g hell he wasn't steering a zigzag course and if he didn't jolly well know that it was prohibited making any kind of bloody f—g noise on a merchantship in wartime.

It was eight bells and the watches were changing and Joe and Tiny began to laugh coming along the deck just at the moment when they met Mr. McGregor stalking by purple in the face. He stopped square in front of Joe and asked him what he found so funny? Joe didn't answer. Mr. McGregor stared at him hard and began saying in his slow mean voice that he was probably not an American at all but a dirty 'un spy, and told him to report on the next shift in the stokehole. Joe said he'd signed on as an A.B. and they didn't have any right to work him as a stoker. Mr. McGregor said he'd never struck a man yet in thirty years at sea but if he let another word out he'd damn well knock him down. Joe felt burning hot but he stood still with his fists clenched without saying anything. For several seconds Mr. McGregor just stared at him, red as a turkey gobbler. Two of the watch passed along the deck. “Turn this fellow over to the bosun and put him in irons. He may be a spy. . . . You go along quiet now or it'll be worse for you.”

Joe spent that night hunched up in a little cubbyhole that smelt of bilge with his feet in irons. The next morning the bosun let him out and told him fairly kindly to go get cookee to give him some porridge but to keep off the deck. He said they were going to turn him over to the aliens control as soon as they docked in Liverpool.

When he crossed the deck to go to the galley, his ankles still stiff from the irons, he noticed that they were already in the Mersey. It was a ruddy sunlit morning. In every direction there were ships at anchor, stumpylooking black sailboats and patrolboats cutting through the palegreen ruffled water. Overhead the great pall of brown smoke was shot here and there with crisp white steam that caught the sun.

The cook gave him some porridge and a mug of bitter barely warm tea. When he came out of the galley they were further up the river, you could see towns on both sides, the sky was entirely overcast with brown smoke and fog. The
Argyle
was steaming under one bell.

Joe went below to the focastle and rolled into his bunk. His shipmates all stared at him without speaking and when he spoke to Tiny who was in the bunk below him, he didn't answer. That made Joe feel worse than anything. He turned his face to the wall, pulled the blanket over his head and went to sleep.

Somebody shaking him woke him up. “Come on, my man,” said a tall English bobby with a blue helmet and varnished chinstrap who had hold of his shoulder. “All right, just a sec,” Joe said. “I'd like to get washed up.” The bobby shook his head. “The quieter and quicker you come the better it'll be for you.”

Joe pulled his cap over his eyes, took his cigarbox out from under his mattress, and followed the bobby out on deck. The
Argyle
was already tied up to the wharf. So without saying goodby to anybody or getting paid off, he went down the gangplank with the bobby half a step behind. The bobby had a tight grip on the muscle of his arm. They walked across a flagstoned wharf and out through some big iron gates to where the Black Maria was waiting. A small crowd of loafers, red faces in the fog, black grimy clothes. “Look at the filthy 'un,” one man said. A woman hissed, there were a couple of boos and a catcall and the shiny black doors closed behind him; the car started smoothly and he could feel it speeding through the cobbled streets.

Joe sat hunched up in the dark. He was glad he was alone in there. It gave him a chance to get hold of himself. His hands and feet were cold. He had hard work to keep from shivering. He wished he was
dressed decently. All he had on was a shirt and pants spotted with paint and a pair of dirty felt slippers. Suddenly the car stopped, two bobbies told him to get out and he was hustled down a whitewashed corridor into a little room where a police inspector, a tall longfaced Englishman, sat at a yellow varnished table. The inspector jumped to his feet, walked towards Joe with his fists clenched as if he was going to hit him and suddenly said something in what Joe thought must be German. Joe shook his head, it struck him funny somehow and he grinned. “No savvy,” he said.

“What's in that box?” the inspector, who had sat down at the desk again, suddenly bawled out at the bobbies. “You'd oughter search these buggers before you bring 'em in here.”

One of the bobbies snatched the cigarbox out from under Joe's arm and opened it, looked relieved when he saw it didn't have a bomb in it and dumped everything out on the desk. “So you pretend to be an American?” the man yelled at Joe. “Sure I'm an American,” said Joe. “What the hell do you want to come to England in wartime for?” “I didn't want to come to . . .” “Shut up,” the man yelled.

Then he motioned to the bobbies to go, and said, “Send in Corporal Eakins.” “Very good, sir,” said the two bobbies respectfully in unison. When they'd gone, he came towards Joe with his fists clenched again. “You might as well make a clean breast of it, my lad. . . . We have all the necessary information.”

Joe had to keep his teeth clenched to keep them from chattering. He was scared.

“I was on the beach in B.A. you see . . . had to take the first berth I could get. You don't think anybody'd ship on a limejuicer if they could help it, do you?” Joe was getting sore; he felt warm again.

The plainclothes man took up a pencil and tapped with it threateningly on the desk. “Impudence won't help you, my lad . . . you'd better keep a civil tongue in your head.” Then he began looking over the photographs and stamps and newspaper clippings that had come out of Joe's cigarbox. Two men in khaki came in. “Strip him and search him,” the man at the desk said without looking up.

Joe looked at the two men without understanding; they had a little the look of hospital orderlies. “Sharp now,” one of them said. “We don't want to 'ave to use force.” Joe took off his shirt. It made him sore that he was blushing; he was ashamed because he didn't have any underwear. “All right, breeches next.” Joe stood naked in his slippers
while the men in khaki went through his shirt and pants. They found a bunch of clean waste in one pocket, a battered Prince Albert can with a piece of chewing tobacco in it and a small jackknife with a broken blade. One of them was examining the belt and pointed out to the other the place where it had been resewed. He slit it up with a knife and they both looked eagerly inside. Joe grinned, “I used to keep my bills in there,” he said. They kept their faces stiff.