The Odyssey of Ben O'Neal (5 page)

A little later, I navigated by a warehouse below Front Street and walked out onto the wharfage, and there sat the
Christine Conyers.

I gasped. She literally shone in the midmorning sun. A big square-rigger, deeply laden, black of hull with white trim, she was the most outstanding sailing vessel I'd ever seen. The brass on her glittered; the decks were like Mama's sink top, scrubbed to whiteness. No vessel had ever been spat upon and polished any more than the
Conyers.

How could they possibly make fun of Captain Josiah Reddy when he commanded such a ship? Jealousy, as one master had said, was likely the reason. I stood quite a while just looking at her, angel figurehead on her bow to the fancy gold-inscribed name on her stern, four masts stretching up to the cloudless sky.

Finally I summoned up all my courage and strode down the dock beside her, reaching the gangway. There were a few men working on deck, notably one hulking man standing with his hands on his hips, and I guessed that he was the bosun, Gebbert. Boss of the deck crew.

I said to him, "Permission to come aboard, sir?"

He turned. He had small eyes, usually the mark of a mean man, and a face that should have been slaughtered with last fall's hogs, above a short neck. His hands and arms were huge, shoulders thick and wide. I think Filene would have had trouble besting this bosun, though Pro-chorus Midgett, who was not above using his feet, might have handled him.

I will try to spell it the way he talked it: "Vat do you vant?" he asked, chickpea eyes hard as whetstone.

"I'd like to apply for a cabin boy's job," I said, determined not to let his looks sway me.

"Vee don't need no boys on das ship," he replied.

"I'll work for my keep," I said. "I need passage to the Barbadoes. I'll do anything just for my food and the voyage."

The other men had stopped work and were looking at me. Over the bosun's shoulder, one tall, owl-eyed sailor shook his head as if to tell me,
Stay on the dock.

"Vee don't need no boys on das ship," the bosun repeated in a growing growl. Surfman Mark Jennette once told me that a good bosun had marlinspikes for fingers, hair like hemp rope, and Stockholm tar for blood. This man had all three, I did believe.

Just then, another man, a rather small, trim man, stepped around the outboard side of the afterhouse and took a summing-up look at me. Hair turning ivory, but dark-browed, he was dressed in a business suit, had on a red tie and high celluloid collar. With a bulldoggy, weather-lined face, deep-set gray eyes, he stared at me piercingly but spoke instead to the bosun. "Hans, how many times have I told you to be courteous." For such a small man, he had a deep, lilting voice.

That was my introduction to the infamous Captain Josiah Reddy, of Port Wilmington, Delaware.

The bosun said, "I thought vee vere going to hire a man for dat job."

The captain ignored him and moved across the deck to stand by the polished rail. "Show me your hands," he said.

He should have looked at my knees; they were dancing. I held my hands out.

"Palms up."

I turned them over. They shook a bit.

"You've done some work," said Cap'n Reddy. Those dark eyebrows, coarse as horse bristle, stood out like caterpillars beneath his yellow-white hair.

"Yessir," I managed, after a swallow.

"Do you like music?" he asked, voice coming up from his shoes.

I could take it or leave it alone, but I gambled. "Yessir."

"Do you like Siamese cats?"

I gambled again. "Very much." I didn't like cats of any kind.

He nodded. "Be in front of Hudgins & Hurst tomorrow at eight o'clock. Parley Bakerby is my shipping master. Tell him to sign you on as steward's boy at a dollar a week."

I almost collapsed, both from joy and fright. But I gave him a snappy, "Yessir," having no idea what a steward's boy did, and not caring. With that, and no more words, he walked rapidly toward the afterhouse.

Defeated, the bosun stood glowering at me, and behind his back the thin sailor who had cast me a warning head-shake was now circling his finger around his temple. That gesture, I think, was to tell me that the bosun was insane. Perhaps the captain. Maybe both. Or the gesture might have been directed at me.

I got away from there as fast as I could, nonetheless pleased that I had obtained employment, still determined not to let false impressions of the bosun and the
Conyers'
s master interrupt my plans. I had come to Norfolk to go to sea, and that was almost accomplished.

M
IND WHIRLING AROUND
happily, success within reach, I went straightaway to Mrs. Crowe's, there to announce I'd found a ship. She answered crisply, "The N&W machine shop will still be here when your ship is long sunk," which tended to dampen my enthusiasm. But, with one problem solved, I asked Mrs. Crowe how I might find the British consul.

"You going to England?"

"No," I said, but then had to tell the whole story of Tee again, and I was truthfully beginning to sound like a wax record. How she'd been flung up on our beach after the
Malta Empress
wrecked; how Mama and I had nursed her back to sanity; how Consul Calderham had tried to spirit her away; how she'd caused a commotion with her family's silver treasure on Heron bar; how I'd finally shipped her north less than ten days ago, and now like a scuppernong vine she was still around me. Mrs. Crowe blinked quite a lot through the whole thing but then went to her writing desk and pulled out a paperbound book entitled Norfolk City Directory.

I looked over her shoulder. At the top and bottom of each page were advertisements for everything from Tom's Creek Coal to Quattlebaum's Pharmacy. She found the British consulate on Magazine Lane, north from 59 Queen Street. That book was a storehouse of local information.

It was now about noontime and she served me lunch, though that wasn't in our contract, and I spent another hour, simply to pass it, just looking over the city directory. In it was everything from Eastwood's Detective Agency, on Yaxley Lane, to the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company and the La Mode Hair Dressing Parlor for Fashionable Ladies. An interesting document. Then I went along to Magazine Lane to renew acquaintance with Consul Calderham.

No sooner had I knocked on his door and opened it when he rose up from behind his cluttered desk, seemingly surprised. In the background was a British flag and a silver-framed picture I took to be the Queen of England. She was old and kindly looking.

He shouted, "You!"

I was taken aback. I had done nothing. So far.

"I might have known," he yelled, face all balled up. His right hand was swathed in bandages. His derby hat was off, and I found out that he'd been concealing baldness from me. He'd always worn his hat when he visited the Banks to spirit Tee away. Unsuccessfully, I might add.

"Where is that atrocious girl?" he continued in a shouting voice.

I answered respectfully, being careful not to lie, staying the good Methodist, "Isn't she on her way to London?"

"You know full well she isn't."

I did know that but believed it best to draw him out. "You mean she didn't get on the
Vulcania?
"

It's a wonder his shining head didn't turn cherry red. He yelled, "She ran away a week ago last night, along with that flea-bitten dog."

Boo did have a lot of fleas. "Why did she do that?"

"Because she's incorrigible! She's a disgrace to the Crown."

That was not my picture of Tee. She'd disrupted our lives on the Banks without meaning to. But, generally, she'd seemed to be a kind and caring girl. Or so I thought. I said, "I'm sorry to hear that."

Then he simmered down a minute and asked, suspiciously, "Why are you here? All this trouble can be traced directly to you and that idiotic lighthouse keeper."

That was only partially true, and Filene wasn't a lighthouse keeper. He happened to be one of the best surf captains on any coast. I tried to remain calm. "I came here to go to sea," I replied honestly. "I just dropped by to inquire about Teetoncey's departure."

"Above all, her name isn't Teetoncey. It is Wendy Lynn Appleton, a British subject."

"I know, sir," I said, careful to be polite.

"And I hope she's been burned at the stake by now. She's not only a runaway, she's a thief."

I couldn't believe that. I said, in Tee's behalf, quoting Mrs. Crowe from another conversation, "She's as honest as a creek pebble."

Calderham's reply smoldered. "She'll soon turn honest when she's arrested. I have the local authorities out looking for her."

"The police?" I asked, startled.

"The police," he said, firmly.

"There must be some mistake, Mr. Calderham. Tee's a fine girl..."

Suddenly he was turning livid once more and waved that bandaged hand at me threateningly. "I've a good mind to call the authorities again and have you arrested."

Now I decided to stand my ground. He'd bullied us enough at Heron Head. "I've done nothing wrong."

"I can think of twenty things," he responded. "I've a good idea that you and that chinless man tried to kill me. I almost drowned in that open boat." He was referring to Jabez Tillett and a trip they took down Pamlico Sound in December. It had been cold and rough. But almost getting pneumonia as a result was an act of God, not ordained by Jabez or myself.

I said, defensively, "There is not a better sailor around than Jabez Tillett."

The consul hit his swollen, bandaged hand on the desk edge and screamed in pain, and I thought it best to leave, having learned not much.

Taking my time, stalling the rendezvous with the girl, I went to Commercial Street down by the ferry landing and watched the paddle wheelers come in for a while, making positively bad landings against the high pilings, just smashing into them, and then walked along the N&W tracks, which are in the middle of Water Street, until I saw the Clyde Line docks down by the river. I turned and went to them, then began strolling along the Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth, looking at various ships, trying to keep my mind off Tee as one tries to avoid a toothache.

Soon the Clyde Line slips ended and I began to see many barges tied up along the wharf frontage. Some were singles; others were tied in tandem. A few belonged to the F.S. Royster Company; some to Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke. Then I saw Phillips's barges, and down toward where Newton Creek dumped into the river was No. 7, properly named the
Rock Thompson,
of Tappahannock, Virginia.

It was an old beat-up barge and looked as though it might have been hauling stone of some type. There was a cabin on the after end, a wooden house that went from side to side, about fifteen feet wide, with a stove stack sticking up. Gulls perched sassily on a laundry line, messing up the deck below instead of helping needy soil. (Bargemasters live in the cabins as the boxy boats are towed up and down the rivers, up Chesapeake Bay, down the inland canals.) Except for a thin curl of smoke coming up the stack, No. 7 appeared to be out of service. I checked up and down the dock for spying eyes, then quickly clambered aboard and knocked on the cabin door. I also whispered, "Teetoncey."

The door opened a crack, and in the gloom I could see four eyes. Two were about eight inches below my level of sight; the other two were about thigh-high from the deck. Then a voice said, "Ben?"

I sighed. "Who else?"

The door opened and Tee flung her arms around my neck. Deciding to find out what it was all about before I made a decision, I stood a little rigid and aloof, but even Boo Dog seemed pleased to see me. Jumping up, licking my cheek. So there I was, the British castaway girl around my neck and the gold dog pushing up against me. Worried that we'd be seen, I said, "Let's get inside."

Inside was like a dungeon and stunk pretty bad from its former occupant, but as soon as I could adjust my vision, I saw that Teetoncey'd completely settled in, with blankets, a couple of pots, and some food. She had spunk, all right, living alone there.

She said, "Oh, Ben, I knew you'd come. Let me look at you."

I hadn't changed much physically in eight days. "What are you doing here?" I asked. "You're supposed to be in London today or tomorrow." That
Vulcania,
I knew, could cross in less than six days.

"You don't know what I've been through," she said.

Well, I'd gone through a few things myself.

Boo Dog sat down in his usual position by her feet, looking up, tongue out, wearing that silly grin I knew so well.

"What have you been through?" I asked.

Tee went over and sat down at the barge-master's battered table, and I sat down across from her, after opening a dingy burlap curtain to let some light in. She didn't look as if she'd been ground up by Calderham; she hadn't lost an ounce of weight, which she could ill afford to lose. Still pretty as ever; afternoon sunlight caught in her daisy hair, turned her eyes July blue.

"The consul met me, as planned, and was very kind and polite. He helped me shop a bit in the afternoon and I was to take the train north the following morning, then sail from New York. All went well until he lit up his cigar after dinner. Then he said to me, 'You cannot take that dog with you, Miss Appleton.'"

I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.
I looked over at Boo and could have cheerfully punched his pinkish bulb nose. If ever a hound was wreaking havoc on earth, he was. To Boo, I said, "Damn all, you caused it."

Tee said indignantly, "Don't blame it on him."

I shook my head in disgust. All this would have to happen on the eve of my departure. "What happened then?"

"I asked why not. The consul said he didn't want to make animal arrangements with the Cunard Line. It was beneath his dignity. Besides, he said he jolly well did not want Boo to contaminate the breed in England. And I jolly well told him what I thought of him."

Contaminate the breed? That got to me swiftly. "Boo is one of the finest dogs in this country." The nerve of the consul.

"Yes, he is," said Tee. "And I insisted that Boo must go wherever I went, but the consul was equally insistent that Boo would go back to the 'miserable' Outer Banks, where he belonged."