Fo'castle Waltz

My father was home when I got there. It was evident he didn't approve of my plans to work my passage and ship out. He belonged (and still does, and I've joined him) to the pushbutton school of thought—that all unpleasant labor should and could be accomplished by pushing a button. Eventually we'll all sit back and get unpleasant things done by pushing buttons, and the only work worthy of men could be accomplished sitting down comfortably, thinking of solutions. He maintained a stony silence all evening.

The next morning when I got back to my ship, a crew of men were scraping her bottom—scraping and painting. I climbed aboard, this time carrying my duffle. I'd come to stay. I don't remember how I got up that long, thin ladder with my bundle. Vaguely, I recall closing my eyes and just climbing up, up, until I felt the solid, welcome rail of the Hermanita.

I went back to the fo'castle. It had the smell of a place where men had slept. The bunk under the one I'd picked for myself was the smelliest and messiest in the fo'castle. After I'd changed into my work clothes, I went out and sat on the hatch. It was pleasant there in the cool of the morning. Some of the rest of the crew began to climb down from breakfast. A few were still chewing their food, their unshaven chins shining with grease; others came down yawning or scratching themselves. What a blot they were against the clear blue sky.

When enough of us had gathered on the hatch, the Mate appeared on the upper deck and bellowed:

"All right. Turn to—go forward and tackle that f'ward winch. Hey, you [and he pointed at the fat man], did you ever work a winch?"

"I've sailed around the Horn and worked more winches than you ever sighted and—"

"All right . . . hey, you young fellers, go along with him. Work the cable off the winch and grease 'em down. The rest of you, come up here."

We followed that old blowhard, the fat Sailing Man, through the shelter deck up forward. Mush, Al, and I. It was evident the Mate had meant us when he said young fellers. We tackled that winch, but it wasn't the old fatty who worked it so we could unwind the cable.

He blustered and blundered around with the levers until he somehow caught one of his beefy hands in the works and gashed it. He bellowed, sweated, and swore, and tied up his bleeding fist in a filthy handkerchief.

Al took over. He seemed to know about this stuff. We spent most of the morning at that job. The twisted wire cable was frayed and full of microscopic needles that cut through the rag with which I was swabbing my section. Soon my hands were bleeding from hundreds of tiny scratches.

The rest of the crew were soon moving rigging up forward. Al told me we were rigging the booms to start loading as soon as we got out of drydock.

I noticed a new man had joined the crew, a stocky young fellow with fine shoulders, powerful arms, and lean shanks. He moved easily and responded quickly to the Mate's orders.

"Well," I thought, "this is the first guy I've seen aboard who looks and acts like a sailor."

When the Mate ordered a line carried up the mast and run through the block up there so we could work the winch and pull the cable through, this new man tied the line to the back of his belt and went up the ladder to the masthead as quick as a monkey—with the line making a long tail after him, pointing up his simian resemblance. He ran the line through and then, instead of slowly and laboriously climbing down, to kill time as the rest of the gang had been doing, he wrapped his legs around one of the cables attached to the mast and zipped back to the deck in a flash.

The crumby crew watched with their jaws hanging. The guy with the Hell's Kitchen accent, the Phi Beta Kappa's brother, was standing at my side.

"Oh. A fancy, movin'-pi'ture sailor," he said quietly. "All right, boin your hands, buddy."

I understood what he meant when I saw the fancy sailor rub-bing his reddened hands together tenderly as he landed back on the deck.

But he kept up that hop-skip-and-jump pace through the morning, to the disgust of everybody but the Mate.

After lunch, as we leaned up against the rail smoking, he joined us. He lit up a cigarette, then rubbed his belly.

"This ship feeds pretty good. They dish out stinkin' gut-rot on that swill bucket," and he jerked his head toward the ship alongside—the one the fat Sailing Man and the big Russian had discussed the day before.

Somebody burped, and the Phi Beta Kappa's brother spat on the deck and flicked his cigarette over the side.