Fo'castle Waltz

And as the Mate stood there waiting for me to settle down to sample the main course and tell him if the bread was dry enough, or would I prefer it more sec, since I couldn't depend upon the true-blue of my mangy shipmates, with a quick swirl of my mental brush I blotted up that dripping cerulean and extricated myself from this mixture of brown I was getting into.

"I'm willing to turn to."

"Huh—what you said?"

"All right—I'll go back to work."

"Now? Wait, I'll have to call the Skipper."

And he locked me up again and skipped oil to call the Skipper.

I nibbled on one of those slices of old bread. I don't like that kind of bread even when it's young, and there are a hundred million Americans like me. Yet that cartel responsible for those soft, brick-shaped, rubbery white loaves of that kind of bread, in spite of the moans of the millions—health authorities and stomach specialists—keep turning them out by the billions, sealing their indigestible tasty goodness in unpleasant, stamped, waxed paper—influencing such innocents as our Filipino Chef in the belief we relish them more than Marie Antoinette's cakes and we delight to ruin our stomachs with it even out at sea. Our Chef counterfeited that bread as well as he could, and the soggy loaves he created were a fair facsimile. The texture was accurate, but the corners just a mite too sharp. They had all the qualities of those I refuse to buy in grocery stores, preferring the crusty rye bread of my forebears.

I gave up gnawing that slice of the staff of life—decidedly the lowest slice of its rubber tip—and tried the liquid accompaniment to my dinner. That water was warm and had a taste to it. The Chef couldn't be blamed for that—it might have been the sun.

The porthole framed the Mate talking to Captain Brandt up on the officers' deck. They seemed in no hurry to come forward. I might have been impatient; I'd slipped out of my handcuffs right after the Mate had locked me in again. No use wearing them now. I'd decided that the he-who-fights-and-runs-away theory might be applied to fights for a principle as well as ordinary brawls—a strategic withdrawal with spiritual reservations, of course.

Captain Brandt nodded his head once or twice as the Mate talked, and gestured toward me in the prow. The Captain was trying to button his coat over his pot belly, but it kept busting open, and after a number of tries he settled for only the two over the pot—compromise seemed to be the order of the day— and he shuffled down the ladder to the forward deck followed by his Mate. That buttoned coat suggested this was going to be an official visit. Maybe he was going to make a short speech welcoming me back into the free world of meek seamen who turned to and jumped in and out of bilges like trained poodles at the bark of Swede First Mates.

I lit a cigarette, sat down and waited for them. They wouldn't find me breathlessly hanging around the door for my release. I'd make some concessions. All right, I'd quit singing and I would clean bilges—there was a certain fascination to the work. Speculation on the ingredients of the muck held a scientific interest for me, and I'd missed the gentle rhythm of dipping my can in the schmutz and swinging it past my nose that idle morning. But smoking I'd not give up.

I could claim I had to smoke as a health measure—I didn't want to grow any more. Any insurance statistician will tell you short men have a better chance at longevity than the tall. That's not only because they make smaller targets and don't stick up from ramparts or bleachers like their taller brothers—obvious victims for a stray slug or a foul ball, or whose mere presence in a barroom always inspires some cocky bantam to pick an argument. Most heavyweight prizefighters on their nights out spend their time ducking wild swings from little expert accountants on a binge, who know they won't be smacked in return. Not all tall guys are so adept at ducking the flying bottles. They haven't the training. But because of the easier and more functional layout of the intestinal coils and vital organs in the squat trunks of short men, they die only from the more cheerful diseases brought on by overindulgence, such as high blood pressure, gout, and cyrrhosis of the liver, instead of the sharper afflictions which cut down the tall, narrow-torso'd men (at the ratio of 3 to 2 according to the statisticians), whose crowded vitals develop congestion of the intestines, elongation of the pancreas, and auto-intoxication.