And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks (6 page)

Al said, “You see, Mr. Goldstein—”

Goldstein stopped him with outstretched hands. “We’ll do the talking around here,” he said in an authoritative voice. “Watch him, Pat!”

Pat stood there rocking back and forth on his heels, slapping the steel pipe into the palm of his left hand, with a crafty gleam in his eye.

Al went on: “I just wanted to see someone I know in the house.”

Goldstein had picked up the telephone and was holding it in a lordly manner. “Who do you know in the house?” he asked.

Al said he knew James Cathcart.

Goldstein said, “Well, we’ll check on that right now.” He stepped over and rang Cathcart’s buzzer. After a considerable interval, Goldstein was talking over the phone in unctuous tones.

“Mr. Cathcart,” he said, “there’s someone down here who says he knows you. We want you to come down and identify him. Sorry to disturb you, but it’s quite important.”

After a while, Cathcart came down from the third floor wearing a silk bathrobe. Al started to get up.

“Just sit right there,” said Goldstein, and turned to Cathcart. “Mr. Cathcart, do you know this man?”

“Yes,” said Cathcart. “What’s the trouble?”

“We found him climbing up the fire escape, and he claims he was on his way to see you.”

“Certainly,” said Cathcart calmly. “I did plan to see him tonight, but I didn’t feel quite well and I went to bed. It’s quite all right.”

“Well,” said Goldstein, “if you say so, Mr. Cathcart.”

Al said to Cathcart, “Well, I’ll come back tomorrow, James. Sorry I got you out of bed.”

“Okay,” said Cathcart. “See you tomorrow then. Now
I think I’ll go back to bed,” and with this he started back up the stairs.

Al got up as if to leave.

“Just a minute!” said Goldstein. “You don’t seem to realize that this is a very serious matter. If it wasn’t for Mr. Cathcart, you’d be on your way to the police station right now. In fact, it’s really my duty to call the police.”

“Well,” Al said, “I’m sorry—”

“Oh you’re
sorry
! Well, your being sorry doesn’t make any difference. I happen to be responsible for the lives and property of everyone in this building. Do you know that it’s against the law even for people that live in the building to climb on the fire escape?”

“No,” said Al, “I didn’t know that.”

“So you didn’t know that, and you pretend to be a man of intelligence.”

Al hadn’t pretended anything. “Of course, now that you mention it,” Al said, in placating tones, “it does seem reasonable. I guess I just didn’t think.”

“It’s about time you did some thinking, isn’t it?” said Goldstein. “Here you’ve gotten Mr. Cathcart out of bed and myself out of bed—”

Al said, “I’m very sorry to have disturbed your sleep.”

“Well, that’s not the point! This is a criminal offense. Why, if I did the right thing, I’d call the police this very minute. Do you realize that?”

“Yes,” Al said, “I appreciate it.”

“Well! You appreciate it, do you? The only reason I
don’t
call the police is because of Mr. Cathcart.” Now Goldstein shook his head and sort of laughed. “Why, I don’t understand this thing at all. If you were a college boy, it would be different, but you’re a man of practically my age.”

“I promise you,” Al said, “that nothing of the sort will ever happen again.”

“Well, I can promise you that if it does you’ll certainly go to jail!” Goldstein shook his head again. “Now, since Mr. Cathcart says you’re all right, I guess we’ll let it go. I really should call the police.”

Al made a move to leave.

“Just a minute,” said Goldstein. “You don’t seem to realize that Pat, here, my elevator man, risked his life tonight. He ought to have some say in this matter.” Goldstein turned to the elevator man. “Well Patrick, what do you think we ought to do?”

“Well,” said Pat, “I don’t like to see anybody go to jail.”

Goldstein turned to Al. “I think you owe Patrick an apology.”

Al turned to Pat. “I’m sorry about this thing,” he said.

Goldstein took over: “It’s pretty easy to say you’re sorry. I’m not going to stand here all night talking to you. I’ve lost enough sleep already, though I guess that
doesn’t mean anything to
you
. Last summer wasn’t it, Patrick, that a thief climbed up the fire escape and stole twenty dollars from someone’s room?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Goldstein, I think it was,” Pat said.

“We’ll forget about this,” Goldstein went on. “I’m willing to let it go this one time.”

Al said, “You’re being very lenient and I thank you. Sorry for all the trouble I caused you.”

“I think a lot of Mr. Cathcart,” Goldstein replied, “and I’m only doing this for him, you understand.”

“Yes, I understand,” Al said, and he began to edge around the desk.

“All right, Pat,” said Goldstein. “Let him go.”

Pat stood aside. Al turned around and said good night. Goldstein stood and stared at him and didn’t deign to answer. So Al turned and slinked out of the door and went back uptown to bed.

Next morning Al came back to Washington Hall and found out from the daytime elevator man that Phillip had moved out of the place and was planning to get a ship.

“I’ve got to stop it,” Al said to me at lunch in Hamburger Mary’s. “He was planning to ship out without my knowing anything about it.”

I said, “Well, you’ve got papers, why don’t you ship out too?”

“Well, maybe I will.”

T
UESDAY MORNING WE ALL HAD HANGOVERS FROM
the Pernod. Barbara went to her classes at nine o’clock and Janie and I slept until eleven o’clock, when Phil got up off the couch and woke us up. It was a warm muggy dog day.

Janie went into the kitchen and heated us some soup. Phillip took a new pair of chino pants and a khaki shirt out of his sea bag and put them on. We were both dressed the same, except that my clothes were older and dirtier.

“Look at this place,” I said. “What the hell happened last night?”

Phil said, “Where’s the cat?”

We started looking around for the cat and found it sleeping in an open bureau drawer.

After we’d finished our soup, I said to Janie, “We’ll be back tonight.”

She said, “You’d better” and went back to bed.

Phillip and I left for the Union Hall.

The NMU hall is on West 17th Street, about a ten-minute walk from Washington Square. I bought a
P.M.
on the corner of 14th Street and Seventh Avenue and we stopped for a while on the sidewalk to pore over the military map of France.

“They’ll break out of the Cherbourg pocket and take Paris,” Phil said. “Caen and Saint-Lô are ready to fall.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said, and we hurried along toward the hall. We were all excited because we were headed for the front.

When we got to 17th Street there were scores of seamen standing around outside the Union Hall, talking and eating ice cream that a Good Humor man was selling.

“First,” I said, “let’s go across here and refresh our throats.”

We went across the street and went into the Anchor Bar and ordered two beers. The beer was good and cold.

“These are all seamen,” I said to Phil. “They are the wildest characters in the world, at least they were when I first shipped out in 1942, and in those days they were mostly seadogs, boy, especially on the Boston waterfront.”

There was one seaman who stood out from all the others because he had a big red beard and Christ-like eyes. He looked more like a Village type than a seaman.

Phillip kept looking at him, fascinated. He said, “That one looks like an artist.” Then, getting impatient, he turned to me: “Hurry up and finish your beer. We’ve got to register.”

So we went across the street and into the Union Hall. The foyer was all done up with murals, one of them showing a Negro seaman saving the life of a shipmate, and it showed his muscular brown arm cradling the pale white face. There was a bookstand where they sold books such as Woody Guthrie’s
Bound for Glory
and Roi Ottley’s
New World A-Coming
, and varied pamphlets of the left-wing type, and the
Daily Worker, P.M.
, and the union weekly, which is called
The Pilot
.

We showed the steward at the door our union books and went into the crowded shipping hall. It is a long, low, wide hall furnished with connecting folding chairs, and with Ping-Pong tables and magazine racks at the back of the hall.

At the front end of the hall there is a big board taking up the whole wall, upon which numbers and letters are posted giving information on the companies and names and types of ships, where they are docked or at anchor and for how long, how many and what kinds of jobs are needed, and the general lay of the shipping.

The hall was crowded with seamen, some in uniform, most of them in civilian clothes. The nationalities
were a kaleidoscope of racial types ranging all the way from sleek, olive-skinned Puerto Ricans to blond Norwegians from Minnesota.

At the other end of the hall, near the magazine racks, there was a desk with a sign over it reading
CIO POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
. Phillip and I went over and looked at the pamphlets and petitions on the desk.

The girl behind the desk encouraged us to sign one of the petitions, which was all about a current fight in the House and Senate over a new postwar bill. Phillip and I signed them “Arthur Rimbaud” and “Paul Verlaine,” respectively.

Then we went and stood in front of the shipping board to look over the prospects. There wasn’t much shipping, because no convoys had arrived recently, but we went over to the registration windows and waited in line to register anyway.

I had to do a lot of running around the offices in back because I was behind on my dues and had overstayed shore leave by a couple of months. A union official who sat at his desk with his hat on gave me a lecture and pointed out that I was behind in my dues, and who the hell did I think I was? I nodded my head and shook my head and looked down at the floor until finally he allowed me to register as a member in arrears. This was going to make it harder for me to get the same ship as Phillip.

Meanwhile, Phillip was all set and registered. I told him to wait a minute and went to the open job window, to see if there were any jobs laying over. This is the window you have to go to when you are behind in dues payments, and also when you have overstayed your leave or anything contrary to the war-emergency rules of the union. The jobs available at this window are the leftover jobs that other seamen have rejected. You can always get a coal boat down to Norfolk or an ore boat up to the Great Lakes.

I asked if there was anything going overseas, and the open job dispatcher said no.

I went back to Phillip and we sat down and picked up some newspapers. I didn’t want to tell him about my difficulties until I had done a little thinking on the matter.

The main dispatcher was calling the jobs over the mike and he had a Trinidad accent that was beautiful to hear. He would say, “Barber Line Liberty on line eight. We need two ABs, two ordinaries, a fireman water tender, three wipers, and two messmen. This ship is going far, far away on a long, cold trip ... you gotta bring your long underwear.”

And later he’d say, “Here’s a job for a second cook on an old-type freighter. Anybody who comes from Chile can go down home.”

Or else he’d say, “Out-of-town job, ship’s waitin’ in Norfolk, need three oilers, company pays your railroad fare down to Norfolk, pay starts today ... here’s your chance to ride in a Pullman.”

Finally the dispatcher called for a whole deck crew. Phillip took out his registration card and said, “Come on.” I had to explain to him that my card wasn’t any good for these jobs.

“She’s goin’ straight across,” said the dispatcher over the mike.

“Did you hear that?” Phillip said. “Straight across. France!”

“I know,” I said, “but I have to wait for an open job. If you want to get on the same ship as me, you’ll have to take your job at the same window.”

“That complicates matters,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “maybe I can get this ‘member in arrears’ rubbed off my card. I can do it myself with ink eradicator or perhaps beef with somebody tomorrow and try to get a new card. I’ll figure something out.”

Phillip began to look glum. “Can’t you pay your dues?” he asked.

“It’s for five months and I’m broke, you know that. But don’t worry, we’ll get a ship together. Just leave it to me.”

“Allen’s going to have plenty of time to find out,” he said gloomily. “And maybe we’ll not be able to get a ship together anyway.”

“Don’t worry for crissakes,” I said, “we’ll get a berth before the week is out. I know the ropes, I’ve shipped out five times.”

I got up and went into the latrine and there I met a guy I’d shipped out with before. “Hello Chico,” I said. He was a little Puerto Rican scullion. “Remember me on the trip to Liverpool on the
George Weems
?”

Chico grinned blankly. Chico had been out so many times he couldn’t remember one trip from another, or maybe he just couldn’t remember what happened from one minute to the other.

“Well, so long Chico,” I said, buttoning my fly.

“So long,” said Chico.

I went back into the hall. It was almost closing time. Phillip was sitting in the same chair.

A seaman came up to me and said, “Listen feller, give me a dime, will ya?” No questions asked I gave him a dime. This guy was going all over the hall collecting dimes. I figured he was one of the old-type seamen like I had seen on the Boston waterfront in 1942 and that he needed a few drinks. Most of these old seadogs had been torpedoed and drowned before the land war even started to get hot.

I looked around the hall at the new-type seamen. A lot of them wore uniforms and gold braid that they bought in army-navy stores. These were the characters who didn’t drink much and spent all their time in seaman’s clubs and canteens, playing society boys with the society girls and actresses that worked as hostesses. Then there were a large number of nondescript, rather shady-looking characters who probably had drifted into the merchant marine trailing their records behind them. Finally I noticed a third general group, a batch of youngsters from all over the country, reminiscent of the teenage sailors in the navy who you find sleeping in the subway with their mouths open and their legs spread all the way across the aisle.