Betsy, the blonde from Rochester, kind of sidled up next to me as we studied the sunset; she had a freshly scrubbed soapy smell that reminded me of Margot, B.C. (before Chanel), and her hair was a mop of curls almost as cute as her blue-eyed, apple-cheeked, lightly lipsticked mug.
“Everyone says you’re a mysterious government agent,” she said.
“Everyone’s right,” I said. “Particularly the mysterious part.”
“It’s too bad….”
“That I’m mysterious?”
“That you’re not going to be on the Yankee except just tonight. That isn’t very long.”
“No it isn’t. Isn’t that a shame?”
She licked her lips and they glistened. “Terrible…. Want to sit with me downstairs?”
Her hand locked in mine, and she led me through the deckhouse down the companionway to the main cabin, where I sat with her at the table, getting dirty looks from at least six of the rich sailor boys. We talked a little about my being from Chicago and how she hated Rochester; she also hated the all-girls schools she’d attended. Under the table, she rubbed her leg against mine.
After some guitar playing and folk-song singing, the crew headed for their bunks at eight o’clock. Betsy waved and smiled and went off to her cabin with Dorothy, giggling.
I lay in my bunk for about an hour, sorting through the memorized information Miller had fed me, an actor going over his lines, feeling the same sort of butterflies in my stomach, and it wasn’t seasickness. A little after nine, I swung out of the bunk and padded up to the deck, where the breeze had turned cool with a kiss of ocean mist in it. I knew that kid Hayden was standing watch and this would be my chance for a word alone with him.
The young man was stretched out on his back in a dinghy, ropes for his bed. His hands were locked behind his head, elbows winged out; bare-chested, in shorts, legs long and gangly, he was studying the starry sky with wide-eyed expectation.
“You always stand watch on your back?” I asked him.
“Mr. Heller,” he said, sitting up, his voice a breathy second tenor. “Is there a problem, sir?”
“Naw. Just thought I’d see if you wanted some company. Eight o’clock’s a little early to hit the rack for this Chicago boy.”
He swung out of the dinghy, bare feet landing lightly on the deck; he was aware that every movement up here was conveyed below, where the others slept.
“Would you like some coffee? I have a pot in the skipper’s deckhouse.”
Soon we were sitting on a bench on deck, sipping coffee from tin mugs, contemplating the stars scattered on a cloudless, richly pastel blue sky shared with a sicklelike slice of yellow moon. It was unreal, like an imitation sky in a Hollywood nightclub.
“The skipper says you’re a real sailor,” I said to the lad, “which I take to mean you’re not paying three grand for the fun of sailing around the world.”
“I wouldn’t mind having three grand,” he reflected. “I’d buy my own ship. No, I’m getting paid, one hundred a month. Johnson didn’t want to pay me anything, you know, said the experience of a voyage around the world would be pay enough. But I drove a harder bargain.”
Words tumbled out of this kid’s mouth without modulation, dropping off at the end of the sentence as his breath gave out. It was as if he were issuing the words to float before him for review.
“Yeah, you really held his head under the water on that deal,” I said.
He regarded me with steady eyes, his smile turned a sardonic shade rare in one his age. “The lure of this life isn’t money, Mr. Heller. It’s the utter simplicity.”
“Your skipper’s taking in a pretty penny for sharing this simple life with these spoiled brats.”
“Well-heeled vagabonds, I call them. You see, that’s why I’m probably destined to be a mate, not a master. Johnson doesn’t have to deal with just the ship, but with the land—finance, lectures, photographs for the Geographic. He’s practical. I’m romantic. He’s tolerant. Half the time I want to toss these rich babies overboard.”
“They love you, you know.”
A grin blossomed. “Well, I pride myself on treating them harshly, and they thrive on the punishment. Maybe it’ll make men of them…if the war doesn’t do it first.”
The world, by way of the ocean, stretched endlessly before us, seeming empty, nicely empty. No people.
“It is coming,” I said, “isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s here. It’s everywhere…back home they just won’t admit it.”
The gentle rolling of the ocean beneath the boat was lulling. The lapping of water splashing against the hull made a sweetly percussive music.
I asked him, “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into tomorrow?”
A smile twitched; he was gazing out at the waters. “I know where we’re taking you.”
“It’s a risk that isn’t worth a hundred a month.”
“The skipper asked me to go along, and I’m going.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m tellin’ ya, take a pass. There’s a motor on that dinghy; Johnson can take me by himself.”
“No, I think I’ll go along.”
“I thought you liked the lure of the simple life.”
“I do. But I like things lively, too.” He laughed, but it came out more like another word: Ha. “You know, the skipper seems immune to the finer things…tobacco and booze and these island girls.”
“He has a pretty wife.”
“Exy’s a princess, but me, I’d leave her home.” He sipped his coffee, stared out at the moon’s yellow reflection on the ocean. “This one time…we’d been sailing west and north of Tahiti…we lay to at a quay in a lagoon near Raiatea. This broad-beamed copra schooner draws up alongside—with a cargo of beautiful girls. Twenty of them or more, lining the rail nearest our ship, clinging to the rigging. Ravishing creatures.”
“You run across boatloads of babes out here frequently, do you?”
He shook his head. “Regretfully, no. This was a charter out of Papeete, a planter named Pedro Miller, friend of Nordhoff and Hall’s.”
They were the authors of the bestsellers about the mutiny on the Bounty and its aftermath.
“They invited us aboard…wine, music, laughter, dancing. I met this black-haired girl who did this grass-skirt dance…. I was walking with her into the village when I glanced back and noticed the skipper standing on the Yankee deck, near the wheel, arms crossed, Exy sitting on a skylight. Wonder what he was thinking?”
“Probably that he was going to get laid, too, but not have to worry about South Sea Island crotch rot.”
He bellowed a laugh, then suppressed it, not wanting to wake anyone below. “You’re a cynical one, aren’t you?”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Hayden, you may think you’re a romantic…but right now you’re looking at the biggest romantic sap in the South Pacific.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Well, I’ll be with you tomorrow…and my pistol will be under a tarp at my feet.”
“Let’s hope you can keep it there.”
His eyebrows lifted as he cocked his head and grinned at me, and nodded in agreement. Then his eyes narrowed in good humor. “Say, uh…I see Betsy took a shine to you.”
“Yeah. Cute kid.”
“You always been this irresistible to women?”
“Just lately.” I stood; stretched. “Think I’ll go below. Wake me if a schooner of native girls stops by.”
“Okay…but I don’t think you have to worry about catching the creepin’ crud from Betsy.”
“Oh?”