Fo'castle Waltz

Mush and I would grab our dungarees and shirts (the ones we'd washed—our dinner clothes), towels, soap, and bucket, and go back aft to the bathroom. Al and the Fat Man would be there ahead of us, since they lived right next door in the fo'castle. We'd strip, fill our buckets from the fresh-water tap, warm it up with a dash of steam from the pipe, then—here's the recipe for a bucket bath: dunk your arms, splash some water on your body, then work up a mass of lather. The Fat Man looked like a melting snowman when he did a real job on himself, but he usually skimped—might have been too tired on some evenings.

Properly and completely lathered, you lift your bucket, stand upright and dump its contents over your head. If you've done it right, you've washed all the soap away; if not, that's too bad. For there was an unwritten law in the fo'castle that everyone adhered to: two buckets of fresh water a day for each man —one for washing your clothes and one for bathing.

After a few days of bathing with the Fat Man, Al, Mush, and I maneuvered so that we bathed just a moment or two before or after he did. Not that we minded him so much, but he was too big around to scrub his own back and each one of us had been roped in by his pitiful, "Listen, feller, will you gimme a rub?"

Scrubbing his broad, beefy red back with curly bristles sprouting on it was too much after a day of chipping decks. It was too much like washing an immense, gritty old sow.

Bucket bathing is one of the most satisfactory methods of bathing I know (provided you bathe without fat men). I've attempted it now and again later on, but it seems the drainage in our bathrooms has never been adjusted for that final splash, and we get complaints from the people downstairs. I understand the Balinese bathrooms provide for bucket bathing, but I've never been to Bali.

Then, refreshed, with our hair slicked down and dressed in our clean dungarees, we'd light up our cigarettes and sit out in the sun on the after hatch. I'd given up shaving—I mention that perhaps too casually. Perhaps I should admit it now and get it done with: I decided to raise a beard.

It was the first of three I've raised more or less unsuccessfully in my lifetime. In those days scraping a razor over my face was a senseless business. In fact, every fourth day required a very careful scrutiny through my glasses to find hairs long enough to demand a razor. My nearsighted eyes were always weak, and I believe the added strain I imposed on them with that every-fourth-day shave didn't help any. For ten days I hadn't shaved, and since I was pretty well tanned up by this time and my beard sprouted blond, no one paid any attention to it. But since that beard did bear some relation to events that follow—my first encounter with a hardened fille de joie in a place called The Philadelphia Bar in Rio Santiago; again on the occasion when I was mistaken for a North American Indian in Bahia Blanca; and in the mutiny later on—I thought I'd call your attention to it now in preparation. And too, though I sadly shaved it off on my return to New York, I never shaved the mustache that was raised with it to this very day.

Sitting on the hatch, with the sun coppering up the color of everyone with a fine warm glow, those half-hours between our bucket baths and supper were as golden a series of half-hours as I ever remember. I never had one complete 22-carat hour, but I've had a lot of 14-carat half-hours on the old Hermanita.

Scotty the wiper would join us. He climbed out the door that led to the black gang's quarters. Scotty, Pat the oiler, and the bird-necked guy were the only members of the black gang the deck crew would mix with. The rest of them would stay over on their side of the ship. Scotty was a cheerful, gay guy, in spite of his job: day man for the black gang—clean-up guy, handy man, scullion—our own equivalent down below in the engine room. Nothing could be lower.

Scotty was a curly-headed Brooklynite who had been raised by an uncle in Scotland. He came back with a burr as thick and tangled as heather. It was pleasant to listen to him talk and sing, and he danced a fine Highland fling. We looked forward to his hopping out of the black gang's passageway in the evening. He'd pop out with some funny Scotch song, do a few dance steps, and then sit down on the hatch. I remember the "Gud or Duke of York" and "I Love my Wife, I Love her Dear-r-ly" and some hymns, but they should be sung, not written. Seems that though he bathed himself daily, as did all the black gang, his eyes, like theirs, were always rimmed with black fuel oil, and the hollows of his head, neck, and arms always had hints of dark smudge, like the effect you try to get in patining a piece of sculpture.