He loaded with another parachute flare and fired up and into the wind. In the falling garish light everyone on the dock was lying face down or was on hands and knees with eyes covered.
“God bless you, Captain Frank,” came Rupert’s deep solemn voice out of the dark when the flare died. “May He in His infinite mercy give you courage to burn Commissioner.”
“Where’s his wife and children?” Frank asked.
“We get them out. Don’t you worry,” Rupert said. “No harm of any kind come to anyone innocent.”
“Should we burn him?” Frank turned to the others in the cockpit.
“Oh, cut it out,” Thomas Hudson said. “For Christ’s sake.”
“I’m leaving in the morning,” Frank said. “As a matter of fact I’m cleared.”
“Let’s burn him,” Fred Wilson said. “Natives seem to favor it.”
“Burn him, Captain Frank,” Rupert urged. “What do you say?” he asked the others.
“Burn him. Burn him. God give you strength to burn him,” said the boys on the dock.
“Nobody want him unburned?” Frank asked them.
“Burn him, Captain Frank. Nobody see it. Nothing ever been heard. Not a word’s been said. Burn him.”
“Need a few practice shots,” Frank said.
“Get off this damned boat if you’re going to burn him,” Johnny said.
Frank looked at him and shook his head a little so that neither Roger nor the boys on the dock saw it.
“He’s ashes now,” he said. “Let me have just one more, Rupert, to stiffen my will.”
He handed up the cup.
“Captain Frank,” Rupert leaned down to speak to him. “This will be the deed of your life.”
Up on the dock the boys had started a new song.
Then a pause, and pitched higher …
The second line was sung like a drum bonging. Then they went on:
Then they went back to the other old African rhythm four of the men in the launch had heard sung by the Negroes that pulled the ropes on the ferries that crossed the rivers along the coast road between Mombasa, Malindi, and Lamu where, as they pulled in unison, the Negroes sang improvised work songs that described and made fun of the white people they were carrying on the ferry.
Defiant, insultingly, despairingly defiant the minor notes rose. Then the drum’s bonging response.
“You see, Captain Frank?” Rupert urged, leaning down into the cockpit. “You got the song already before you even commit the deed.”
“I’m getting pretty committed,” Frank said to Thomas Hudson. Then, “One more practice shot,” he told Rupert.
“Practice makes perfect,” Rupert said happily.
“Captain Frank’s practicing now for the death,” someone said on the dock.
“Captain Frank’s wilder than a wild hog,” came another voice.
“Captain Frank’s a man.”
“Rupert,” Frank said. “Another cup of that, please. Not to encourage me. Just to help my aim.”
“God guide you, Captain Frank,” Rupert reached down the cup. “Sing the Captain Frank song, boys.”
Frank drained the cup.
“The last practice shot,” he said and firing just over the cabin cruiser lying astern he bounced the flare off Brown’s gas drums and into the water.
“You son of a bitch,” Thomas Hudson said to him very quietly.
“Shut up, christer,” Frank said to Thomas Hudson. “That was my masterpiece.”
Just then, in the cockpit of the other cruiser, a man came out onto the stern wearing pajama trousers with no top and shouted, “Listen, you swine! Stop it, will you? There’s a lady trying to sleep down below.”
“A lady?” Wilson asked.
“Yes, goddam it, a lady,” the man said. “My wife. And you dirty bastards firing those flares to keep her awake and keep anybody from getting any sleep.”
“Why don’t you give her sleeping pills?” Frank said. “Rupert, send a boy for some sleeping pills.”
“Do you know what you do, colonel?” Wilson said. “Why don’t you just comport yourself as a good husband should? That’ll put her to sleep. She’s probably repressed. Maybe she’s thwarted. That’s what the analyst always tells my wife.”
They were very rough boys and Frank was way in the wrong but the man who had been pitching the drunk all day had gotten off to an exceedingly bad start with the approach he had taken. Neither John nor Roger nor Thomas Hudson had said a word. The other two, from the moment the man had come out onto the stern and yelled, “Swine,” had worked together like a really fast shortstop and second baseman.
“You filthy swine,” the man said. He did not seem to have much of a vocabulary and he looked between thirty-five and forty. It was hard to tell his age closely, even though he had switched on his cockpit lights. He looked much better than Thomas Hudson had expected him to look after hearing the stories all day and Thomas Hudson thought he must have gotten some sleep. Thomas Hudson remembered, then, that he had been sleeping at Bobby’s.
“I’d try Nembutal,” Frank told him very confidentially. “Unless she’s allergic to it.”
“I don’t see why she’s so dissatisfied,” Fred Wilson told him. “Why you’re quite a fine-looking physical specimen. You really look pretty damned good. I’ll bet you’re the terror of the Racquet Club. What does it cost you to keep in that wonderful shape? Look at him, Frank. Did you ever see as expensive a looking top of a man as that?”
“You made a mistake though, governor,” Frank told him. “You’re wearing the wrong end of your pajamas. Frankly I’ve never seen a man wearing that bottom part before. Do you really wear that to bed?”
“Can’t you filthy-mouthed swine let a lady sleep?” the man said.
“Why don’t you just go down below,” Frank said to him. “You’re liable to get in trouble around here using all those epithets. You haven’t got your chauffeur here to look after you. Does your chauffeur always take you to school?”
“He doesn’t go to school, Frank,” Fred Wilson said, putting aside his guitar. “He’s a big grown-up boy. He’s a businessman. Can’t you recognize a big businessman?”
“Are you a businessman, sonny?” Frank asked. “Then you know it’s good business for you to run along down into your cabin. There isn’t any good business for you up here.”
“He’s right,” Fred Wilson said. “You haven’t any future around with us. Just go down to your cabin. You’ll get used to the noise.”
“You filthy swine,” the man said and looked at them all.
“Just take that beautiful body down below, will you?” Wilson said. “I’m sure you’ll get the lady to sleep.”
“You swine,” the man said. “You rotten swine.”
“Can’t you think up any other names?” Frank said. “Swine’s getting awfully dull. You better go down below before you catch cold. If I had a wonderful chest like that I wouldn’t risk it out here on a windy night like this.”