Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (28 page)

Captain Johnson, at the wheel, invited me to stand beside him as we cast off and glided out. Brown-as-a-berry rich kids scurried around his deck in shorts and no shirts and no shoes, as he called out to them, “Foresail!…Mainsail!…Forestaysail!…Jib!…Maintopsail!…Fisherman staysail!” One by one they were set, then finally a massive square sail dropped from the yardarm, and a triangular one rose above it, thousands of square feet of sail, a skyscraper of canvas.

“Spend much time at sea?” the Skipper asked.

“Does Lake Michigan count?”

He laughed. “On Lake Michigan, do you run into swells two hundred yards from crest to crest?”

“Well, Chicago
is
the Windy City…. I’ve had some ocean voyages, Skipper. I think I can survive one day of this.”

And one day was all my tour of sea duty with the
Yankee
would amount to: a long day, ten hours, and after sundown, we would drop anchor and spend the night, so that come morning Johnson and his first mate could row me to the next stop on my itinerary: Tanapag Harbor. Saipan. The town of Garapan.

In the meantime that long day did prove a restful journey into a simpler time. It was a sunny day with a warm breeze, the ship sailing steadily along, the ocean shimmering with sunlight. The boys—and two pretty girls in their twenties were along, too, which considering the dozen young men aboard made for interesting arithmetic—began the day ambitiously, scraping and varnishing the teak trim, splicing ropes and lines; the two girls, a blonde (Betsy from Rochester, New York) and a brunette (Dorothy from Toronto), were sewing canvas covers and mending sail. By afternoon, the barechested sailor boys and the two girls in shorts and boy’s shirts were sprawled here and there on the deck, bathed in sun, or reading in the shade of dinghies.

Belowdeck had a warmth due to more than the sun streaming through the skylights; painted ivory with varnished teak trim, the big main cabin had built-in upper and lower bunks on either side. Down the middle was an endless teakwood table where, between meals, cards were played, books were read, letters written. In the forward galley, Fritz the cook (one of the few crew members getting paid) made the most of powdered milk, canned butter, and wax-coated eggs. Lunch was particularly memorable—turtle stew with curry, baked beans, fried onions, and johnnycakes.

Watching these young people work and play was a reminder of life’s little pleasures. Johnson’s wife, Electa, Exy to one and all, was a compact curvy blue-eyed blonde in a blue-and-white-striped top and blue shorts, and who could blame Johnson for running off to sea in her company? She spent much of her time with her two young sons, a two-year-old and a four-year-old, who nimbly navigated the deck, balancing on forebooms, bouncing on sails.

“They’re fearless,” I said to her.

Exy’s smile was a dazzler. “The
Yankee
’s their home. They never lived anywhere else…. You’re in their back yard.”

The two kids had their own cabin below, down the hall from the Captain and Mrs. Johnson’s cabin, the engine room and bathroom. There was also a double stateroom for Betsy and Dorothy, who may just have been two more of the “boys” on this trip but nonetheless did not make use of the main cabin’s dormlike bunks.

I had been assigned my own bunk, for my one night aboard the
Yankee,
six and a half feet long by three feet wide, thirty inches between my thin mattress and the slats of the bunk overhead. The wall next to me was bookshelves, as was the case with every bunk, and the main cabin had an entire wall devoted to books. This was a well-read, and often-reading, crew, reflecting the hours they had to kill, and their good breeding.

The ship’s first mate, Hayden, a tow-headed, long-legged, sinewy middle-class kid from New Jersey, twenty or so, passed along the skipper’s orders with an offhanded ease. Sometimes, seasoned sailor that he was, he seemed to be acting as an interpreter between Johnson and the rich kids playing sailor. Of course, some of these “kids” were in their late twenties and early thirties. The wealthy crew included a doctor, a photographer, a radio expert, and a guy who knew his way around the ship’s diesel engine. Even so, Hayden had the respect and obedience of them all.

The young man had a serious mien but an explosive smile, and was devoted to Johnson. Thinking about what was coming tomorrow morning, I decided to look for a chance to talk straight with Hayden about what he was getting into.

After a turtle-steak supper, the crew gathered on deck to see what kind of sunset God had in mind for them. The sea turned a glaring red, and the water danced with phosphorescence, as if an underwater fireworks show was going on. The childlike joy on the faces of these pampered, hardened mariners as they leaned at the rail was both touching and a little sickening. Life wasn’t this simple, anymore. These were Depression times; war times. They were hiding, out here in the open. But who the hell could blame them?

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?”

“She’s a nice girl, but a tease. She’s got half the crew crazy over her and is the cause of more cases of blue balls than you can shake a stick at.”

“That’s an image I’d rather not linger over, kid. G’night.”

“G’night.”

As I was coming down the companionway, there she was, cute Betsy, waiting on the steps; she wasn’t in her nightclothes—still the shorts and a loose-fitting boy’s shirt that she bobbled under.

“Sit with me,” she whispered. “And talk.”

I was tired, but I sat, on the stairs; she snuggled next to me, wanting to be kissed. So I kissed her, all right. I put my tongue in her mouth and one hand on her soft full left breast and another on her rounded rump and she pulled away, wide-eyed, and said, “Well! I never…”

“That was my impression,” I said.

And she jumped to her feet and bolted down the stairs and disappeared into her cabin.

The next morning, after breakfast in the main cabin, I emerged from the bathroom in my dark suit with clerical collar and received bemused looks all around, particularly from Betsy. She sat before her plate of powdered eggs and fried potatoes with her eyes as wide as a pinup girl’s, and I leaned in and kissed her cheek, and whispered, “Bless you, my child.”

There was laughter ’round the table, but good-natured, though Betsy flushed and hunkered over her eggs. I thanked the crew for their hospitality and friendship, and kissed Exy on the cheek, too, and ruffled the hair on the two tykes’ heads.

From the deck of the
Yankee,
the island that was Saipan was a vague shape in the distance, but rising at its center, like a green peaked hat floating on the sea. Another island could be seen as well, off to the right, smaller, flatter.