Chapter 2

When Pete returned aboard his ship that morning at nine o'clock the chief mate whistled at him from outside the wheel house of the bridge. Ebal Gregor was a squat burly Irishman of about Pete's age with a bad limp and a perpetually unlit pipe slanting out from a corner of his whiskered lips.

"What's the word, Captain?" he asked in his good-natured voice, clamping the pipe stem with his teeth. He came awkwardly down the port-side bridge ladder favoring his left leg, hands white-knuckled on the railings.

Pete met him by the open companionway to the officer quarters. "Yes, we have no bananas," he said to him. "Not for a few days yet. Hear from the Exchange?"

"Aye s'r," said Ebal, lifting his cap to scratch his balding head. "The O Line wants us in the Mediterranean to pick up the slack at Algiers. Figs and dates. More than the eye can see. The French liners can't handle it all, not with the stuffing they've got for the expeditionary forces. The brokers in Singapore have some tramps in route there, through the Suez, but not enough."

"It's this dry hot weather all over creation," Pete remarked indifferently. "Did the Baltic brokers have any news about the northern ports? Word is they'll be ice free all winter."

"Nothing today, but that's the forecast." Ebal pulled his cap down tight over his brow. "I told the broker that it could be a good thirty-forty days afore we'd reach Algiers."

"At best. They okay with it?"

"Not much choice. Not a lotta deadheading tramps available."

"Uh-huh. Any word from New York?"

Ebal shook his head. "Not from Carlos."

Pete nodded. "Seen Todd?"

"Aye s'r. Down in the galley last I seen, sleeping on his plate."

"Send a hand down to tell him I've news for him. I'll be in my cabin."

Ebal Gregor limped down the few steps to the cargo deck, out into a swath of shade cast by a wall of crates and shouted to a Jamaican crewman lounging under a boom arm. "Stevo! That hold cover ain't going nowhere. Get lively now. Go down to the seamen galley. Give the chief mechanic my compliments and say he's to get his ass up to the Captain's cabin. Got a word for 'im."

Pete went along the passage to the end door, bumped it open and tossed his cap onto the chintz armchair below the starboard porthole. His desk was cluttered with charts and ledgers, gleaming in the glow of the two stern windows behind it, its oval-backed mahogany chair looking back at him with its get-busy air. He frowned. Busy with what? It was a waiting game now.

The steward, Riley, had been in to change the bunk sheets. The one thin blanket was folded neatly under the pillow. There was the scent of magnolia drifting from the bureau at the foot of the bunk, compliments of the tea candle in its tiny tin saucer. The smell reminded Pete of Georgia. The state, not the girl. He went round to his desk and settled into the chair.

He was leafing through a calendar when a rapping came from the door.

"Come in, Todd," he said and flung the calendar aside.

Todd Brickly slipped through the narrow gap he had made between door edge and door frame. His grease-stained green overalls hung loosely on his angular body as if he was a coat hanger with braided ropes for arms and legs. His cap was worn far back on his head, hidden by spiky brown hair. He was a year or two past thirty, still with the coiled energy of youth but with the resigned cynicism of old age in his washed-out blue eyes.

There was a red spot above his right nostril.

"Is that blood or spaghetti sauce on your nose?"

Todd wiped his nose with the tip of a finger, puzzled at it, and wiped his finger on his pantsleg.

"This 'bout Georgia?" he asked eagerly, "or the coal run?" He stood wide-legged before the desk, bony hands on hips, leaning slightly forward, his tongue running to and fro over his upper lip.

"I think I saw your sister at the Seaside. Anyway it was a pretty strawberry-blond girl, eighteen or so. A cab took her to the boarding house on Shingle Street."

Todd made fists and shook them like mirambas. "The Swede's? Or Granny Apple's?" he asked with a sudden nervous suspicion.

"I didn't know there were two. She's at the Swede's."

"That's good. Granny's the whorehouse. Rents rooms."

Pete took out a pouch of Cuban tobacco flakes and a roll of yellow papers. "What's your plan? Gonna go see her?"

"You're damn right, captain."

"Suppose she tells you to go soak your head in a tidal pool." Pete started rolling a cig, looking up at Todd with a grin.

"Aw, I'll talk sense into her. She'll listen to me." He swung his arms back and forth, bobbing on his toes and smiling up at the deckbeams.

"Sure she will. That's why she ran away from school to be a gun moll."

Todd barked a harsh laugh. "Aw, that's just Pop spoutin' off his worse case scenario. She probably skipped with some Don Juan. I'll straighten things out."

Pete licked the flap of the cig and sealed it, twisting the ends. "Get the pressure gauge fixed all right?"

"I had Hartly do it. Watched him. A fast learner. Good kid. A mite bit scrappy, though."

"Nothing wrong with that. Riley says we're good on coal."

"Right. I'd like to shove off for the Swede's," Todd said, motionless now and solemn.

"Before dinner?" Pete lit up and leaned back in his chair. "Cookie's got a surprise for us."

"What, he catch an octopus?"

"We'll be having none of that shit again or I'll hang him from the boom."

Todd nodded, his mind elsewhere.

"Go see her whenever you like," Pete told him, his own mind wandering. "We won't be sailing for awhile yet."

Todd made a mock salute and spun round for the door.

"Send Buddy in, Todd, before you jump ship."

"That damn boson don't like me telling him anything," Todd complained bitterly, looking back with a hand on the latch.

"That's why I want to see him," Pete said. "If he gives you any lip, you've my permission to fatten it up for him."

Todd bared his canines in an eager grin. "Aye aye," he said and slipped out through the gap.

Pete sat listening. He heard distant sounds, identifying most of them and wondering about the ones that seemed to come from dreams. He rolled another cig, and lit it just as the door opened and Budwick stood in the doorway like a throwback to the troglodytes.

"Toss my cap over and have a seat," Pete said, gesturing at the chintz armchair.

Budwick moved slowly, always, unless the circumstances dictated otherwise. He was big in a smooth muscled way, well covered with fat but not in any way flabby or soft. He was in his late 20s, wore canvas jeans and a white undershirt. He held his cap in a broad dimpled hand. He always took his cap off when addressed by, or presenting himself to, an officer on board. His dark hair was butched. His face was a ham with small eyes, a flat nose, and a short lipless mouth.

Buddy, as the crew called him until recently, politely set the Greek fisherman's cap on a corner of the desk and eased himself into the armchair. He acted as though he had never encountered such a chair before, let alone sat in one.

"What's rubbing you wrong, Bud?"

He tilted his head away from Pete's direction and stared at him sideways, a pensive look, like he was trying to interpret a foreign speech.

Pete blinked at him in the hazy humid air. "You get a letter from home?"

Slowly Budwick straightened his head and stared at the deckboards. A forefinger tapped an armrest.

"Goddamn her," he said quietly.

Pete smoked a minute, remembering. Then he said, "The crew respects you, Bud. But they're getting tired of the surliness."

The big man made a noncommittal gesture with fingers, shoulders, and head.

"Look, I don't have any magical solutions, Mister Budwick. You just have to suck it up. Things like this happen. You shake it off or swallow it and get on with business. You're a good asset. One of these days you might be sitting at my desk. Don't blow your chances."

Budwick leaned over with forearms on knees and let his hands go limp.

"I'll get over it," he said.

"Until you do, pretend you have."

After a long moment Budwick nodded, slapped his knees and stood up like a grizzly rearing on its hind legs. "Anything else, Captain?" he asked, his face almost smiling.

"Ask around if Skippy's on board. He might've gone to the cockfights."

"Yeah, he did. Or I guess that's where he went. Hour ago."

"Good practice for first mates, evidently," Pete said. "Well, I'll handle it."

"Something I can help you with?"

"Naw, gonna radio Ross 0'Brien's place. Poker game tonight. Join us."

Budwick seemed to think it over, as if weighing the invitation against the pressure of his duties. Then he nodded. "I can do that," he said.

That night, as Ross shuffled the cards at the round folding table in the center of the cabin, with Pete, Riley, Ebal, Cookie, and Bud relaxing back in their wooden slat armchairs, the deckhead wreathed in tobacco smoke and strains of a rumba coming in through the stern windows from a cruise ship, the electric lantern shining possessively on the six piles of poker chips, the door shook with an urgent pounding and opened to reveal the watchman, Tubbs, squinting across at Pete.

"There's a constable wantin' to see the captain," he said. "There's been trouble in town. Sounds like Brickly."