“You’ll be out of it soon.”
“I want to talk to you,” Brace said covertly. “But not on the ship. You can’t scratch your own can aboard this ship without it gets logged.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Maybe not,” Brace said with a sincere attempt to speak justly, “but I want to talk off the ship.”
The matter being perhaps serious, and Howard nosy, the two men met over five-cent cups of coffee in a run-down cafeteria where old men chewed, burped, scratched their crotches and looked at walls decorated with fading murals of sea battles between tall ships. Dim battle flags flew above washed-out spouts of cannon smoke that fumed beneath gray bulges of burning sails. A portrait purporting to be Nelson, or Farragut, or possibly the man who originally opened the cafeteria, hung above the cash register.
“I’ve been to this town four different times,” Howard said. “I still haven’t seen an admiral.”
“You have to guess they’re around somewhere.” Brace leaned forward, elbows on the table, and the two white stripes of his apprenticeship seemed the only part of himself or his outfit that glowed. His regrown shock of undistinguished hair rode like an insipid layer of paint above a face that, to Howard, seemed mightily changed. Howard, himself nearly stilled by loss, and the awfulness of chance, and by fear, could only guess that Brace still thought of a dark, entrapping compartment where water reached toward his mouth.
“Is that true about libraries?”
“It’s true.”
“It’s a good thing to know,” said Brace, “but it’s not what I want to talk about.” He fumbled in his jumper, apologetically drew out a pack of smokes. Lit one. Offered one. “I don’t want to go to the engine room. I don’t want Levere to know that.”
“Why tell me?”
“You’re the guy does watch lists.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Okay,” said Brace, “it doesn’t. You’re the guy who watches everything.”
“You got cured of engine rooms?”
“I was scared,” said Brace. “I can go belowdecks, but I don’t like it any more. I don’t like Dane all that much, but I don’t like belowdecks.”
“Dane’s okay.”
“I honestly don’t know,” Brace said. “He’s different now. He’s actually the one who got me loose.”
“And he smacked you around.”
Brace looked like a man who remembers the tenderness of romance long after the troublesome lover has departed. “Yeah, he smacked me.”
“Last fall Snow smacked you. Does a guy have to hit you before you like him?”
“I didn’t say I liked him. I just say this was different. A lot different. I was going to drown.” Brace looked into his cup as if he read messages there. “There’s more to it than that, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Still,” said Howard, “you have to admit that it makes you sound like a pervert.”
“I can’t help how it sounds.” Brace looked up, directly at a portrayal of a bursting gun. He gazed unflinchingly at the blast. “Dane was different coming back on that scow. Told me things. Off the ship he’s at least a little different.”
Howard supposed to Brace that even crocodiles mellowed.
“That ain’t it,” said Brace. “I have to find out if I can trust him. I don’t want the engine room, but if I can’t trust him, I don’t want the deck. I’ll have to have a transfer.” His eyes, for only a moment, shifted from the dusky paintings on the wall. His eyes showed a trace of fear.
“I don’t get it.”
“These guys owe me something.”
“Nothing.”
“They do,” Brace said. “I have to find out. Do they keep their promises.” He butted the cigarette, lit another. “If I went to the engine room, it would leave one man short on deck. I want to know do they keep their promise, even if it shorts the deck.”
“So why do you need me?”
“You’ve been around,” said Brace. “I wanta know, is it fair what I’m doing, or am I setting them up?”
“You could be setting your own self up,” Howard told him, “but, yes, it’s fair.”
“I wanted to know,” Brace said with smoke-puffing sincerity, “‘cause I’m never going to pull hard for anybody, ever again, ever, unless they don’t lie to me.”
Howard opined that Brace was going to lead a lonely life.
“If that’s the way it’s got to be.”
“It’s a good ship.”
“It’s a ship,” Brace said. “These guys have to be as good with their mouths as they are at sea.” He leaned back in the chair, and the intensity that crowded him seemed to concentrate. “Dane rigged that patch. I don’t know everything, but I know what I saw.”
“You saw a bosun rig a patch,” said Howard.
“That’s a way of not lying. When you can do that.”
“I guess,” Howard told him, “that you have to be from Illinois.” Howard slurped the last of his coffee, a man eager to make a quick departure.
“Nope,” said Brace. “Every time I try to understand this, you, or somebody, wiggles away. Now quit wigglin’ and talk.”
“What am I supposed to say? We do what we do. It must be worth doing. Otherwise we wouldn’t.”
“That’s what all the liars say.” Brace’s barely lined face seemed concentrated on memories of thousands of hundreds of liars. “I don’t mean you. That’s what my old man used to say about trombones. He could make a trombone sound exactly like a flat tire.”
“Every time you guys talk about your fathers, I’m glad I didn’t have one.”
“But Dane isn’t a flat tire. Snow isn’t. Or not if they keep their promise…” and Brace faltered.
“Okay,” said Howard. “We do what we do because dopes can’t take care of themselves. The world is mostly dopes and pimps. The pimps can take care of themselves.” He rubbed at his empty coffee cup as though it were a crystal ball. He looked into the cup, looked at Brace. “I just lost a friend,” he said apologetically. “A dope killed him.”
“Only dopes and pimps?”
“I don’t know,” said Howard. “Scavengers. We’re the scavengers, and we pick up the leftovers. We’re crows, magpies, basking sharks, gulls…”
“Ohio must be worse than I thought.”
“It’s not Ohio,” said Howard. “It’s every place. You asked for this. You enlisted.”
“I’m not complaining.”
“Yes, you are. But you can’t think that Levere and the rest can waste time worrying about what some punk seaman deuce does.”
“They better,” said Brace, “or else they better start learning to play the trombone.”
“If I see an admiral, I’ll mention your name.” Howard made motion to stand. “I get so sick of drinking. I’m going to a movie.”
“One thing.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t believe that about ghosts and Jonahs?”
“I believe it about the ghost,” Howard said, and he was grim. “That ghost and I have been around and around—three times.”
Howard stood, fished for his money, counted. “I have enough for two, if you have our bus fare back.” He looked at Brace, who seemed fascinated by a flaming, crashing mast.
“A Jonah’s just another name for bad luck,” Howard said. “Maybe it’s just another name for weather. We get tore up every year, we break at least one arm every year….” He paused, because his catalog suddenly foundered on a reality. “A guy doesn’t get lost every year,” he said.
“Is it going to be a funny movie?”
“Comedy,” Howard told him. “You call them comedies.”
Chapter 21
On the clear winter horizon, a white ship, whitely asparkle with ice.