Pirate Talk or Mermalade (6 page)

A danger to themselves and others.

But this boy’s got arms on him that could lift a barrel of sand and a face that would belay a mother, if she saw two of them together. You boys keep the deck quiet with yourselves if you can, and take the watch whilst I have a hand of whist, and wait.

Aye, aye.

Aye. Aye, aye, aye.

You are giddy, fearing for your life.

I can’t stop laughing. What were the chances of my own brother falling prey to us? At least I can laugh, I am falling down laughing at that. It’s time to laugh.

We are the only two aboveboard now.

Not so loud. We have a job to do.

We?

Tie the wheel down, brother.

What is about to happen?

Luggams knows. He’s folded his spyglass like a snail’s trick and taken it below.

Brother?

I’m the pirate captain now, like atop the whale. If you weren’t so green, you could scale the ropes and sing out verses from the f’osicle in honor of Luggams who hates them.

You remember wrong about that whale. It were me atop.

You were gouging at the eye, the bloody eye. I stood atop and heard it sing.

It were the woman Peters took, singing.

She couldn’t sing, she could only count.

You weren’t listening. I wish I had a cutlass. I don’t like the quiet.

They do keep a chest full of cutlasses below.

I knew it so.

They sort them after a boat-taking such as yours. Myself, I snatch any one that comes my way. Roger and Ebert, the plunder lads, they’ll be joining us at the next ocean.

I’d like one with bone at the hilt or a ruby and a broad blade like an Indian’s.

Leave the whalebone and watches and you might make a pirate yet.

A cutlass, just for protection. To cut my way back to land.

Hear that?

You could hear a bream breathing. That’s nothing.

You don’t know the half of the fear that swims under to get at you. All seamen worth their salt—and that’s heaps of salt—know there’s strangeness under their feet, about how it’s us or our cousins at the very bottom, walking around as usual, breathing in and out the actual water.

It’s a strange life, the sea life, I’ll grant you that.

Soon you’ll have the look of the strange yourself.

All this glug-glug-glug of grog, and the hold, and me with a bump on my head.

One of the others would’ve quartered you with two blows.

This be the price I pay, this and the yo-ho-ho. I hate the water more than before. Hear it again?

That’s weather, that’s nothing.

A hole’s starting in the side of the ship, a hole where someone’s swum under with a poleaxe.

You’re just trying to frighten me. That sound’s been breathing since the fishes swam, since the sun came up on your quartermaster Smith telling his story. You don’t hear anything.

They’re sharpening their cutlasses on each other’s cutlasses. They’ll be over the side even sooner and sharper. We have to go first.

Some ship must’ve seen you take mine.

Water’s seeping into the side of the ship. We’re going to have to swim for it.

There’s no one in sight.

Only the Malagasy swim, with their daggers in their mouths, and so jolly the rest of the time.

I’ll tell them I was taken by force, I’ll say I never did what pirates do except that you would kill me if I didn’t. Let’s hide.

You landlubbing coward. Take this pig knife. It will make a pike if you lashed it to the mop with a length of line and twist the line double. We’ll board them first, as quick as they show themselves.

With all the cutlasses you save for yourself, you’ll soon be safe and lifting grog in Marseilles, impressing the women with your pirating.

Stop kicking at the door. They’ll think you’ve been hung and never come out. You have to make it sound like happiness. A jig. Like this. Dance the way you danced with Cap’n Peters’ girl.

I never knew you could pick up your feet like that.

Ma could, when she wasn’t practicing to dangle. Or when she dangled. The fiddler knew.

Let’s wave the white flag before we stain it with our own blood, let’s tell them Luggams made us do it and show them Luggams. If I hoist this—

Keep your shirt on.

Before I die, let me show you the bone I carved on the voyage out, bought with the last of my money. “Man Sawing at a Tree on the Occasion of His Betrothing.”

The title is bigger than the piece.

Aye.

Don’t break the door down. Someone is as liable to come through with a plate of brisket as with a knife.

We’re the plate of brisket. Don’t you see? We’re the tasty chum and that’s why they’ve left us up here, to draw them out. I think the deck leans. They’re counting the powders and purses below.

These coves we’re passing do stink of the Spanish or at least of a Moor tied up in them, burying treasure by the chest as if it were a crop. I say, two boats in a week! What luck!

Hullo! Over here! Bring them on!

They come on like flies.

I’ll clean the foredeck with this fork. You get the others up out of their coffins belowdecks—let them fight to their ends and not ours.

Get up now and quit your moaning. Best we mop the deck with the blood of the others.

My leg.

Get up, I say. I think we’re the last. No one else is looking alive.

Leg.

You can move that leg. You can, I saw you move it when that Moor went after you.

See his cutlass, how it shines—it shines like a jewel in a jar.

Move your leg.

Tomorrow. See the light on the edge of it?

I’ll move your leg myself then.

My leg!

Don’t scream. Give me your kerchief to stop the blood. And your cutlass.

Not the one I wrested from three brigands and a captain with just your pigknife held between my teeth?

Magnificent, you were. So fierce their eyes didn’t blink but you had them shaking. You slashed and slashed. I wondered where you found your piracy so quick, it must be in
the family. Now, give me the cutlass.

You’ll have my own knife at your throat, you will, just like I had the captain with it.

Want me to pull out the bits from your leg with just this pig knife and my fingers? There be holes in the sail and gulls in the rigging and dead men rolling the deck in their blood, and you won’t loan me the use of your cutlass to save yourself, however it was obtained?

So long as I can see it.

You’ll feel it.

Wait, wait—where is it going?

There’s coals left from the cannonwork—I must burn you to stop the blood.

No, no, not that.

I can slip the cutlass from your fingers after all your insides have rotted. A fine cutlass it is too, with those rubies in the hilt, or is it all my brother’s blood?

It’s my foot I can’t move, nothing’s wrong with my leg. This foot is stone.

Watch the flame, watch the flame.

Why can’t I faint like a girl?

Just breathe steady instead of making all that noise. Bite the rope like it was Ma’s, served up in the soup, and breathe.

I’m bimmm-fff-iiii-ttt-ing.

Leave off me with your bloody chops, you cur. Bite the rope, not me. Already so much blood slicks up the wound I can hardly get a grip on it and I’ve still got the sawing to do.

I’m fainting, I’m going to faint.

Then faint, in Christ’s blood, faint.

I can’t.

Stop that screaming, someone will hear.

They’re all dead.

Are you sure? They could be like us, they could be resurrecting and fit to kill, or a half-dead cook with his knives.

What—you go wiping the blade on your sleeve like I’m a bloody joint of lamb?

The lice won’t stick if I drag it across me clean. If I douse it with water, the sharks swarming will come. Breathe when I do. Breathe.

Breathe, breathe—where did you get a knack for this breathing and butchering?

Bother. The shot is too far in.

You’ll cry if I die.

From joy to be rid of you! Sing out or talk, your shrieks make the cutting hard.

O, the merry old man of Bis-do-bee!

Better.

I dreamt of a mermaid the size of a whale with a place to move around inside her, a pleasure place.

Really? Maybe I dreamt it too and didn’t tell you. There’s the shot. Now, hold still. This blood is so bloody slippery.

Give me that cutlass! Give it to me! You’ll do me no more harm.

I’ll knock you in the head with it, I will.

The cutl—

Egad, I will have to chop the whole of the leg, to the joint and around. You’ll not be thanking me for this. Use the courage you swore to when Luggams made you the pirate you didn’t want to be.

My head. You didn’t have to crush my brains out!

Now to the coals again.

Coals!

Just a quick burn.

My leg.

As soon as I have you trussed, I’ll toss the leg over and goodbye, just like that. Goodbye in the dark and good riddance. Then I’ll steal the bo’sun’s false leg if he hasn’t rolled off, and make you a new one, bye-the-bye, to fit. A leg you can jew up a dance on the spot for the ladies—but hold still now and stay quiet and quit that bleeding.

Four hundred gold pieces?

If there be a pirate left to pay you for the leg. The ship be ours now, and all its little treasure to split between us. There’s a squall in the dark that’s coming for us, but the sails still be strong. We could be in for a flip.

The ship’s leaning on her shoulder already, the fish will be climbing my boots by dawn.

Boot.

Aye, the one.

The ship sails itself.

Having to haul the fly-besotted enemy overboard, it’s another offense against us.

They could’ve left the charts.

They could’ve left the sails unslashed, the rigging primped and the rudder sound.

Where are we? We’ll never see our shores again in this drift, unless we are taken and hanged.

Hanged.

Will you shut that parrot up?

Hanged.

Hold the beak.

The governor himself sat with Shanks and Luggams, and refit their ship in sight of Boston harbor. I heard the mate tell of it.

Home is not Boston harbor.

If we could but steer home.

It’s not so far off when it comes to measuring from sea to sea.

A visit home is your grave day.

You made that up.

I made it up while Luggams slept, and sang it in my sleep while he forbade it. I love to sing. I learned from Ma’s husband, the sixth.

Hanged.

You know, in another week, I’d have had a solid gold cutlass. We were going up against the King of Cutlasses in a week, the great pirate of España with his knives of gold.

Soft knives, that, in solid gold.

Oh, yes, he would have been our next except you had to practically bleed to death, wriggling round the deck like a briney shrimp, chasing me with your leftover leg.

Shrimp, never.

Hanged.

I’ve heard of a parrot that could recite all the rivers in Africa.

There’s enough talking between the two of us.

But if you were to—

I’m not dead nor drowned in the drink yet.

Tis’ a fine leg I made for you, yours is. It’s the table that’s not much anymore.

I fear my stump is spoiling. Even the spoils you took are spoiled.

That ham they had!

The velvets stood up with mold.

I look nice enough in them, my stitchery done best without the wash of blood.

Butchery, not stitchery.

Hanged.

Shut up! Shut up! I can’t stand it.

Our dead foe taught it, to lash himself with warning.

“Save the cook” is better. That’s what I’d teach it. Every time before I stick someone, I ask Cook? first, not brother.

A spate of brothers and all of them like you, with your time pieces a’rusting, and foul, desperate boats.

Hanged.

Brothers all, brothers who will make you drink seawater soon enough.

You knew that would bring up the pearls. They were all I had from two years of repairing watches. Now all I have is my leg, the lost one, swimming beside the ship. Would that it would guide us.

By the by, you are free now. Free of the pirates’ hold.

Free to die? I swore, didn’t I?

Hanged. Hanged.

It’s a smart one, to fly off so fast as that.

You should never have released it.

It’s taken such a liking to you. Pretties your shoulder.

Begone! Begone! It’s just waiting to see if I die of my
leg. A bird of prey.

The game then, before it returns.

Black teeth—Queen of spades.

Blind eye—My deuce.

Nine o’ hearts—Pegleg.

Bit pecker—Double sixes.

Fiver—Hook hand.

Pieces o’ eight.

You win.

At least the bleeding’s stopped.

Pull down the canvas to shade me. I hate all fish though I could swallow a white-fleshed one now, I could.

Hanged.

It’s just come back to check on your leg.

Hand me the poker. With the cutlass and the redhot poker, I’ve got twice the chance of killing it.