Fo'castle Waltz

We had just about worked our way through the Rock of Ages when some of those who had been sleeping hollered we ought to shut up. So we did, and sat out in the sun talking quietly.

Yes ... on the seventh day we rested. . . .

What particularly whetted our appetites for complete repose aboard that ship was the tantalizing aperitif that was served up to us all week in the picture of that tremendous lump of inactivity—our Chief Engineer, old One-Ton, stretched out on a straining deck chair with a wall of old frayed pulp magazines banked around him, Wild West Adventure Stories, some old Argosys and stacks of True Life Terrible Detective Stories.

All through the week as we Soogie-Moogied on the officer's deck on the sunny side, or sweated away at chipping decks, we'd come to a point along the deck when the Bos'n would hold up his hand like a traffic cop and in a low voice carefully guide us around the chief's chair. He'd be there in the sun, his mountainous belly rising in a grand swell, a counterbalance to the lower curve with which he filled the canvas deck chair. His head was thrust forward as far as he could get it along that mountain of fat, and as he peered through his sun glasses at the pulp magazine resting on the summit of his belly, his heavy-mouth always hung open with his lower lip so big it looked like another chin jutting out of his well-endowed collection. With all that, he plopped there (you couldn't call it sitting—the spine functions in sitting and there was no spine in that lump of blubber), sweating like the best of us in the hot sun.

I never remember that he looked up as we chipped around him or as we Soogie-Moogied the bulkhead on either side of him. Later in the day when the sun moved around the other side of the ship, he appeared—I never saw him move his chair and stuff—arranged the same way in the sun on that side. Then one of us would be sent back to where he'd been, to take care of the deck or bulkhead he'd occupied earlier in the day.

He lived those weeks of Sundays all the way down to the Argentine. And we envied him so, we all wanted to be Chief Engineers. That's the reason we did not play deck tennis on Sunday—just sang hymns and tried to do a lot of nothing long and fast.

There was another individual whose weekly behavior made us (Al and Mush, not me) wish for Sunday. That was the knobby little pug in the mess crew. I don't know what his job was exactly. I believe he helped the chef clean up the galley and was a second waiter in the officers' mess.

The reason Al and Mush waited for Sundays on his account was because every afternoon after the Pug would get through washing dishes he'd come out on deck dressed as a prizefighter! Jersey shirt, trunks, laced soft shoes, gloves and all—looking very professional. He'd hang up a punching bag near the outer galley door, and then go to it, punching and ducking and shadow boxing with a lot of fancy footwork.

As we passed by, all grimy and crumby with rust and grease, the Pug would do something specially fancy with his bag—rat-ta-tat with his gloves and pick it up on his elbows, or a particularly clever one-two punch at his flickering shadow.

"How's 'bout it, boy? Wanna put on d'gloves? Hey, you blond fella, how 'bout?"

We'd give him a "nerts" as we slumped by.

It bothered Al. "Who does that damn little bum think he is?"

"Yeah," Mush would sympathize. "If you ever got him in the gym back in old I.S.U., you'd knock his block off."

The little Pug didn't know Al was on the I.S.U. boxing team —and had his letter for football too—but he did know we couldn't take any time off during the week. So on Sunday Al and Mush stalked the deck around the galley door in hopes that the little Pug would practice and invite Al to put on the gloves. But he never did—not on Sunday. He was busy all day and he moved quick if he had to empty his buckets overside while Al and Mush were near his galley door. But I found out later he was not scared—he had work to do. Sunday was a big day in the galley. The midday meal was dinner on Sunday, and though the menu varied very little from Sunday to Sunday, it was more elaborate than our weekly lunch.

The established fare for Sunday dinner was always stewed chicken—well, not exactly chicken. Those tough giant drumsticks and those teeth-resisting lumps of stuff that looked more like splintery knots of yellow pine than they did like something that belongs on a dinner plate propped up by a watery mound of mashed potatoes, a pile of dark green-centered carrots with the worst spots whittled out and flanked by some sea biscuits. That was not chicken. The resinous gamy taste of it was not chicken. Those old birds lived a long life long ago and had been dead a long time.