Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) (6 page)

A
mile away you could see the sun glitter on the new tins. Old Nagy took the feed bag off his horse, checked the net that held the mound of tins, and told me to get on for the ride to Steveston, on the river. Nagy loved company; would never accept anything for the rides—well, maybe a bottle of rye at Christmas—but you had better know how to listen because he could talk your brain to mush. This time he railed about the price of oats, how horseshoes don’t last, the long wait at the whore-house, and the goddamn Pakies who didn’t net the tins tight so they’d clink and clang and drive you out of your mind.

I mostly ignored him, but he never noticed because I threw in the occasional “damn right” or “you said it,” then with the clap clap of the horseshoes I drifted off and had a nap. I was startled awake in the stench of rotten fish, to the shriek of gulls.

The great cedar-shaked cannery leaned darkly over us. Steam engines hissed and a fish boat engine roared as it made a tug-turn on the spot. Anxious voices yelled in every language you can name but over it all rose Nello’s melodious,
“Donato, Donato, sarebbe stato meglio se non fosse nato!”

Nello and I went back a long time; we slithered in the same mud in the war—on opposite sides, but then mud is mud. He was the best sailor I ever shipped with; it was in his blood because his father had been a sailor from Pisa, and he also knew the northern coast, and that was in his blood too because he was born there to a Kwakiutl mother, in a village called Karlekuies. It was at the end of a narrows Cook named Beware Passage.

Except for the odd run with me, Nello had quit the sea a year ago; no explanation, just threw up his billet on a clipper ship that sailed lumber to New Zealand and took on odd jobs on the waterfront. Now he was filling in for the dock foreman unloading the listing fish scows, organizing the chaos of Hindus, Chinamen, Dutchmen, and Bushmen on the fish-slicked docks. Nagy blew his horn so loud his old horse startled.

I crossed the vast shed where soldering irons belched acrid clouds and a monstrous machine named the Iron Chink clattered. Chinamen hosed down the floors, and women, with their infants on their backs, stood in water slicing, gutting, and throwing; the same motions in endless repetition from the first light of dawn until the place went dark.

I saw Nello coming up the ramp through the spraying water. He was a couple of inches shorter than me, but his feisty stance coupled with what he used to call my “condescending stoop” made us, in my mind, similar in height. He had his mother’s skin and straight black hair, but his father’s frail bones, held together by a flesh so hard that his veins only found room by bulging through his skin. His face was gaunt, making his blue eyes even more startling.

His movements were quick. Aboard the ketch, he would always fidget with blocks and lines, making minuscule adjustments to sheets and halyards until the sails were set to perfection, without a ripple. He was the perfect first mate except for his mouth. He would say whatever crossed his mind, consequences or reaction be damned. And he would say it to anyone’s face with his eyes riveted, softening the blow only with an occasional, “Don’t you think so too?” even when the unsaid answer was obviously no. And having embarrassed or offended, he was never apologetic. “It’s the Tuscan in me,” he’d say with a shrug, as if that somehow justified all.

He came leaning slightly forward, a worn, narrow-rimmed black hat pushed back off his forehead, in a dark seaman’s sweater with the sleeves ending halfway down the forearms to keep away from fishhooks and winches. His strong arms and big hands made him look heavier than he was. He was all of forty but his movements made him younger.

He seemed glad to see me and was about to extend his hand for a shake, but something on my face must have made him uneasy, for he suddenly diverted his hand to his shirt pocket and yanked out the stub of a cigar. He lit it, took a puff, and blew out the smoke with an agitated force as if trying to blow away a bothersome insect. “Good to see you, Cappy,” he said.

“You too,” I said.

“Something eating you, am I right?” he said, studying my eyes.

“You’re always right,” I said.

“When you’re this congenial, I’m in trouble.”

“No trouble, I promise. Just came to offer you a cruise. A vacation from flying fish guts.”

“I don’t need a vacation; I need money.”

“There’s that too. Lots of it.”

“Like the last time. You still owe me half my pay.”

“This time it’s different. Here’s what I owe you,” and I handed him some bills. “And when you step on board I’ll give you half of your share in advance.”

“You rob a bank?”

“Just got me a good trip, that’s all.”

He snubbed out his cigar. That was a good sign; he was calming down.

“How long a trip?” he asked guardedly.

“Can’t tell for sure. Maybe a week, maybe more.”

“How much more?”

“A month.”

“Forget it!” he blurted as if someone had slapped his back. “A month’s too long.”

“Two weeks’ pay in advance.”

“Still too long.”

“For what?”

He looked embarrassed. “For me to stand.”

“Stand what?”

“Your cooking. Last time you cooked flapjacks morning, noon, and night. Twenty-two goddamn days; sixty-six plates of flapjacks.”

“And sausages. The first days we had sausages. “

“Burnt to charcoal.”

“All right. A whole month in advance.”

“I’d rather be crucified. That only lasts a few hours, then you get to die,” and he turned to walk away. I had to grab him. I yanked a bunch of bills from my pocket.

“Okay. A month’s wages now and you do the cooking.”

“Tuscan men don’t cook.”

“But you’re half Indian.”

“That half don’t cook either.” And he was leaving.

“I’ll get a cook,” I blurted. “A Chinaman. The best cook in town, from Mr. Chow. You know he owes me.” Chow had already paid me back generously but this much he’d do for me. Nello turned. Considered.

“A Chinaman cook. You swear.”

“On my mother’s grave.”

“And real food; no flapjacks.”

“Not one.”

He counted the bills. “When do we sail?”

“The tide turns at noon.”

“Tomorrow?”

“It’s life and death.”

He thought about it and sucked the cold stub more. “I must be nuts,” he said. And turned and walked away. But before he took three strides he came back. “What kind of a mess are you getting me into? You didn’t get all that money in advance for honest work.”

I told him the story. Most of it: Hopkins, the Kwakiutl, Hay, his wife, without mentioning a word about her and me.

“You want me to hunt down one of my own tribe?” he said in disbelief.

“Nobody’s hunting anybody. The man just wants his wife back.”

“And the masks.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the masks.”

“Just you and me and the Chinaman.”

“And her husband.”

“Poor bastard,” he said. “Must be going through hell. Unless she’s ugly and stupid.”

“She’s not.”

Nello went quiet on me.

“What’s the matter?”

“How long you known her?”

“A bit.”

“Since July?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, I remember. July. This is the one you taught how to sail, right? Jesus Christ. You haven’t stopped talking about her since!”

“That was someone else. The Welsh girl from the alley. The one who knit your sweater. This cold rich bitch would be the last on my list, believe me.”

He didn’t and he said so.

“You think I’d be stupid enough to take the husband along if it were her?”

“You’d take the devil if he paid you!”

“She’s lifeless and cold.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“
Ficca fredda
, my
nonno
used to say. Cold cunt.”

“That’s her.”

“Thank God. For a minute I thought…. But even you wouldn’t sink so low as to drag me into such a mess.”

KATE

The Nights

The nights are long and the night winds sharp, but I lie in the bottom of the canoe, keep out of the wind, and I wrap myself double in blankets over my pajamas. Very stylish; apricot silk with rotten gray blanket. So I’m all right. The canoe is old and it stinks of dead fish or dead something, but it’s safe and with the blankets I’m warm. I’m all right.

We move all night. And all night I lie there, not sleeping much. Just lie there looking at the stars. I never knew, never even dreamt there could be so many. Layers and layers. You can see them if you look long enough. So dense there’s no darkness in between them. The whole sky. All my stars. I know a lot of them by now: their brightness, their names. I don’t mean the names in the books, I never did learn those, didn’t mean a damn to me—I mean, what exactly is an O’Ryan’s Belt? A triple shot of Irish whiskey? So I named them all myself: Uncle Harry, bright and smiley; Fat Joey Miller, kind of lumpy; Mary McLean, because sometimes she’d show up and other times she’d be hard to find. And Dull Sue. Dull but reliable. And that means a lot in this stinking world. She was reliable and very nice, once you got to know her. But few people ever bothered to take the time. George didn’t. He was busy traveling; collecting things. And did he ever get to know me? Though I was right there, traveling with him. Did he ever know even one of my fears? Or my smallest secret?

Oh, well. Dull Sue sure was reliable.

I
had once done Mr. Chow a favor.

One morning, I was loading the ketch with empty herring cans at Ballantine Pier destined for a family cannery in Sooke, a quiet hole on Vancouver Island where the strait empties into the ocean. They were lowering baled cans through the skylight—down below she was still empty; just the bunk and a woodstove—when Nello yelled out to come up and have a look. From seaward comes this wreck of a tramp steamer limping in, beat-up, patched, belching ghastly smoke, listing as if battling a hurricane, down in the stern full of who knew how much water. Rust bled from every fastener, and her sheer was so distorted by years of pounding waves that her back, if not quite broken, was forever deformed. She seemed to undulate as she moved, barely alive, and not only would she never cross an ocean, but I wouldn’t have bet on her making it to the dock.

The stevedores stood among their hills of coffee sacks and bales of stinking hides and stared at the dying ship. A shiny new police car, bell clanging, weaved along the pier, followed by a horse cart full of cops, and out they all poured, forming a wall along the pier ready to defend the continent.

One shouted through a megaphone at the ship that showed no life, ordered the invisible everyone to remain on board, and some even pulled their guns ready to fire at her dented smokestack, her swaybacked bridge, or maybe her limp flag, unrecognizable from soot. Then the enemy appeared: two lean Malays or Siamese clutching dock lines looked at all the commotion with the detached interest of monkeys watching their watchers at the zoo. A few more scruffy seamen crawled out of the hatchways. A pack of cops scrambled down onto her deck and shouted through the megaphone at the poor buggers, ordered them—still as statues—not to move. Then the cops vanished down a hatchway in the hold. The stevedores took her lines and tied her to bollards as if this kind of wreck landed every day.

The cops suddenly reappeared, some gasping, others running to the gunwales and retching over the side, all of them scrambling back onto the dock as if chased by fiends. An emaciated pair of Chinamen came half-naked into the sun, holding by the ankles and under the armpits a nearly weightless corpse. Then others came with similar burdens. They laid the corpses side by side on the foredeck: five, ten, fifteen, and still they brought more. When they ran out of room, they stacked them like cordwood.

From the hold they hauled up seven coffins—some light wood I didn’t recognize—and stood them against the deckhouse ready for the lucky winners among the thirty dead. Somebody laughed aloud; a big stevedor cried. But the cops stood their ground; nobody was getting off alive or dead. There was a prohibition of colored people coming into the country: a shipful of Pakies had been put back out to sea, and they rounded up eight thousand Orientals into a fenced camp on the island ready to stuff them into the next steamer, and shove them off for home.

And they were the lucky ones; the others had died for a king they never heard of on a continent they didn’t know existed, died serving “real” soldiers, clearing mines or burying the dead. But now the war was over and the Pakies and the Chinamen had to go.

By nightfall the stiffs began to reek. The sergeant wanted to cut the lines and let her go. “That’s the way, O’Hanlon!” Nello yelled beside me. “Kick their slant-eyed asses back where they belong. It’s what we should have done when you whities came and ruined the neighborhood.”

“You got a lot of good things from us whities,” O’Hanlon snarled.

“All I got was the clap from your sister.”

“If I had a sister, your nose would be busted.”

“If you had a sister, you would have her clap.”

“Get him out of here, Cappy,” O’Hanlon said, beet-red. “Before I stain my hands with his blood.”

A man with a long pole lit the gas lamps on the shore. Later, Chinamen came with lanterns, steaming pots dangling from their shoulders—roast pork, and tea, and a big cauldron of rice. They filled bowls and handed them down to the bony hands that shone white in the dark.

I went back to load and put things in order below. When I came back near midnight, the pier was deserted, the ship gone. I looked over the edge, sure that it had sunk, but there were no dock lines, no jetsam. “So what did you do with the yacht, Harry?” I asked the dock foreman. “Sailed for parts unknown,” he said. “How about we go get us a beer?”

I
SAILED ALONE
for Sooke on the dawn tide. The sky was clear, the nor’westerly fresh, and by early afternoon I had sailed across Georgia Strait on a reach and was riding wing-and-wing past Saturna Island, keeping to the north side of Boundary Pass so I wouldn’t end up on the gallows in Frisco. At sunset the wind eased, and in the warm fragrance of firs I dropped anchor off a spit to catch an hour of sleep.

When I awoke, moonlight lit the cans.

I sailed with just the main, doing about three knots plus the tide so if I bumped into a deadhead, I wouldn’t bump too hard. The night air cooled, and I bundled up in the cockpit. When the first swells from the ocean passed under us, the ketch rolled gently. Near midnight the wind fell. The fog came in and bit me to the bone. A shudder rippled through me. I thought at first it was the cold. I gybed the main and headed higher northwest.

I was hungry. I lashed the wheel a good half mile off Vancouver Island and went below to get a hard-boiled egg and sausage. Huddled in my big coat, I leaned against the mizzen and hummed to keep myself company and to keep from getting queasy in the lazy rollers. Eat and sing, especially at night. I felt content, and for a moment considered just sailing right out of the damned strait into the Pacific, the thousands of miles of empty Pacific, with the boatload of empty tin cans and all. I went down below to fill the mug, heard the sea rush past the hull and the tin cans give a rustle as we rolled, and I was just coming up the companionway into the splash of moonlight when I heard the first thud: muted, almost shy, as if not wanting to disturb the silence.

The moon glowed through the fog like a candle through angel hair. With the shores now hidden, I lit the compass light. The reddish flame seemed curiously alive. Then the thud came again. Too soft for a log, not hollow enough for driftwood. Soft; like someone tapping in the bow. I went forward on the starboard deck; the moon lit brighter there. The bow wake rose a black fold and trailed off into the night. Tap. A swell raised the bow and lowered it with a whoosh. Tap, tap. I lay over the bow, hung on to the whisker stay, and looked down into the water. Foam flowed from where the bobstay split the sea, for a moment blurring what trailed beside the hull, but as the bow rose again and the bobstay rose free, I could see—so close I could almost touch her face—a black-haired mermaid staring up at me. Her body long and white, only her sharp-boned face and long, streaming hair were etched by the silver light.

They had wrapped her in a white sheet, frail as a child, but her hair was free to snag the bobstay pin, so she swung in the swell and her knees banged the hull. I climbed down; a swell came and put us both half under. As gently as I could, I untangled her hair and set her free. She floated off into the night.

The swells grew and the tin cans rustled. I went below for dry boots but settled for more rum.

The next one came when I stepped back into the cockpit. A man this time, on his belly, head turned like a swimmer taking breaths. The wind picked up and the fog thinned and I could see now, some close, some far, the pallid shapes floating slowly by. We drifted through a sea of the dead. I stared so hard I almost hit the wreck.

Noiseless and darkened, it came out of the fog directly in my way. She made no sound. Her stokers must have given up long ago, for there was no smoke rising from her funnel. She lay lifeless beam-on to the swell, and rolled just far enough that, at each starboard roll, another white-wrapped shape slid across her foredeck and splashed into the sea.

The not-yet-dead had gathered on the aft deck, clinging to the cabin top or with their legs over the rail. My port lantern in the shroud cast a red glow over them. They gazed with stony eyes, not a word, not a plea.

I sailed by.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the wreck vanished from sight. It was a while before I got my thoughts together enough to trim the sail. I took a slug of rum. The fog thickened. The sea was empty; the dead had had the decency to leave. Son of a bitch; why me? Why, in this immensity of empty sea, did those damned faces have to be near me? Hadn’t I seen the bastards enough before? Fine. I’ll stop the first fish boat coming down the coast to get some help from Victoria and get them on their way. Back to bloody China. Or at least toward China, which they’ll never see again because the first gale is going to tear that rat-ass wreck to shreds. Serves ‘em right. Should have stayed at home. Why come anyway? Greed, that’s why. “More,” they wanted “more.” Well, there’s no “more.” The “more” is all gone.

Son of a bitch. Another fifty feet and I would never have seen them. Those eyes in the lantern light. I cursed and flung the empty bottle at the dark. Then I tightened the main and threw the coiled sheet on the deck, uttering a curse I didn’t know I knew. I turned the wheel and fed the main out again. Turned back. The compass rose spun in the sputtering light. This was madness. Back where? What course? How far? Probably sunk by now anyway. For a moment I hoped they’d sunk.

They stood where I had left them, every one of them. This time the green starboard lantern lit their eyes. I yelled at them, my voice breaking with anger, but no one moved. I luffed up and slowed. “Throw me a line, you bastards! Throw rope!” Nothing. I yanked the mainsheet loose and hurled it at their faces. Not a blink. “Grab it, you morons! Grab it!” And I waved a violent motion toward the ketch. Dead as doornails. “This is your last chance, then I’m gone!” I was sailing right by them, within reach, but the sheet kept sliding off the stern rail into the sea, when I saw something shift. Someone moved enough to put a skeletal foot on the rope. A kid, even frailer than the rest. I threw him the stern line. He raised his stick arm and caught it. Others stirred and helped. The swells rose; the ketch and the wreck rose and sank more or less together. I kicked the fenders over as we rubbed against her stern. The kid leaned awkwardly down and lowered his bundle of bones into my arms. One by one they came, I could have sworn I heard their bones clattering. Over the rail they came and scattered on the deck like pick-up sticks.

I herded them into the bow. There must have been forty of them. Good thing I was only running empties. In the engine room of the wreck, I found water up to my knees. I hacked at a sea cock with the fire ax until it gave, and the water rushed in, swirling around me as I climbed back out.

We sailed off. In the pale light the wreck pitched steeply aft.

T
HE DAWN BROKE
. On the pink horizon, only the bow of the wreck now pointed at the sky, then it was gone. Some of them watched the empty sea a long time. I sailed into a little bay, fetched up, and stopped a couple of boat-lengths from the point. “Go on, get off,” I whispered, to keep from waking the fisherman anchored up the bay. The kid was first to rise. He eased his legs over the side but hung on to the rail, then he slid a bit farther. When he let go, he sank like a goddam stone, didn’t even know enough to struggle. I had to save him with the boathook.

I launched the skiff, cleated a long line, then rowed ashore and tied it to a fir. I waved at them to come hand over hand along the line. One by one they slipped into the sea, but they were too many, and when the line went under, they went with it. I hauled on my end to pull them up again and saw the ketch begin to head for shore. I rowed back and dropped anchor; didn’t set it, just dropped it. I hauled the line tight again but not all of them were on it. Some made it and lay like drowned seals on the rocks. The last of them sank a few steps from the shore, but there was no one strong enough to help.

The kid had sense enough to untie my line and I sailed the hell out of there and didn’t even look back until I cleared the point. The dawn had spread and there they were all along the rocks: some standing, some kneeling, some leaning on each other, each one of them bowed as low as their last strength let them.

W
HEN
I
GOT
back to town, neither the papers nor the beer parlor gossip had anything to say about the wreck. Some weeks later I was crossing Chinatown with a handcart of lumber to build some berths when a Chinaman politely touched my arm and asked me if I could step into his shop. What the hell? I thought. Might be a customer. We waited. A frail old Chinaman came in and up to me. I thought he’d give me hell for drowning some of his kin, but instead he looked at me and quick tears filled his eyes. “Grandson,” he managed finally; then bowed. The door opened and in walked the kid, looking a lot better-fed now. He stopped beside the old man, who said more strongly, “Grandson,” and they bowed.

Next Monday a horse cart pulled up to the head of the alley with a load of the best damned boat lumber I’d ever seen—mahogany and teak boards, some a good foot wide—and asked where to unload it because it was all mine, no charge. And next morning down came a couple of pigtailed Charlies with boxes of the weirdest saws and chisels. One of them spoke some English and said they came to build my boat. I told him to turn back around because I couldn’t pay them. He smiled his worn-toothed smile and shook his head. “No pay,” he said. “Honorable family.”

That’s how I knew I could count on Mr. Chow.