Fo'castle Waltz

After I'd been given three or four eviction notices, been down to court as many times, with each presiding magistrate greeting her as an old friend and granting her victim another few weeks to pay up or be thrown out—some of the best artists in America had lived in her building and been ignominiously evicted in time—it didn't bother me too much when she finally got an eviction order that stuck. I'd hastily made the rounds of my friends and patrons. Patrons—those were people who commissioned one portrait for about one hundred dollars, for which you do the portrait of them or their wife, mother, or child, give them a lot of drawing for free, a few small sculpture sketches, have to eat dinner at their house for about a month (that was part of the payoff), lecture them continually on art and art values, advise on the purchase of prints, paintings, art books, appear every Sunday for tea, where you are shown off as the young genius they have discovered—and throw in dozens of tours, with lectures, of the museums, art galleries. . . .

Why, I know of rich art collections bought with ham sandwiches!

So, to repeat, I visited some of those leeches and offered to board out some of my sculpture and stuff they had liked—but not well enough to buy—and gave away a lot of material, clay, stands, etc., to my friends. There was nothing holding me down. I could just disappear—but by the time I came to this conclusion I found a phone booth in a barroom and automatically inserted my nickel and rang information for the Universal Tropical Line's number. There again my parsimonious nature shoved me along: for fear of wasting that nickel, I waited until I was connected with the number.

The boy with the suspenders answered, and I hopefully asked him if the S.S. Hermanita had sailed without me. "Naw," he snapped. "She's going to drydock." "Well, they won't need me in drydock, will they?" "Just a second."

I heard him rustle some papers—maybe he was tearing up all reference to me. Maybe this was an out. Then I heard again. "She's tying up at Pier 12—up the river." Then he shouted ominously, "You get aboard that ship," and slammed the receiver. Why, that tug-bottomed little...

It was almost noon when I found Pier 12. I climbed up a shaky gangplank to the littered deck of the S.S. Hermanita. A man wearing khaki trousers, a collarless striped shirt, sporting a bright collar button and a white yachting cap, stopped me. "What you want?"

I thrust my papers at him and the big Swede (he was obviously Scandinavian) looked at me from under the shiny visor of his cap, then took a quick glance at my credentials, and flung them back at me so quickly that I fumbled and had to pick them up from the greasy deck.

"Change your clothes back aft in the fo'castle, stow 'em in one of those lockers, keep the key you find in the door with you, then come back here and join this gang moving gear." 

Well, I did all that, and in a pair of dungarees flecked with plaster I had used around my studio I came back and joined the gang—except for a few young fellows, as heterogeneous a group of broken-down dock rats and old port bums as you'd ever hope to see along South Street. The brawny men of the sea—huh!

With a cheery good morning, I grabbed the tangle of rope and began to tug at it, carrying it in the general direction in which they were moving. They had not responded to my polite greeting; those near me just gave me a weary look. Then a fierce-looking fat old man snarled, "Drop it."

I did. I guessed he meant that tangle of rope with which I'd been getting nowhere.

"C'mon . . . c'mon," came from the only articulate member of the crew of the S.S. Hermanita. I followed them as they slowly climbed a ladder to the upper deck. They trooped in to what appeared to be a very simply furnished dining room (crew's mess). There were two long wooden tables with no cloth, a couple of large platters of bread, and a few dishes full of some cloudy yellow grease—I found out later it was melted, rancid butter. The crew slowly sat down, dirty and sweaty as they were. I was seated alongside two young guys, one about my own age, a well-built blond with pretty, girlish features and a too short upper lip. Next to him sat a taller, blubber-lipped younger boy whom the blond guy called Mush. They didn't look so tough. The streaks of dirt on their sweaty faces fooled me at first.

I tried to stir up some talk as I turned to the blond.

"That wasn't so hard."

"Huh?"

"I mean port work. I'd been told if I could stand port work, the rest wouldn't be so tough."

"How long you been aboard—who told you?"

"Captain Brandt. You see, I met him. I was introduced by . . ."

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. Everybody was looking at me—from down the table there came a sound.

"Nerts."

I shut up; it was a relief when the fat man bellowed:

"Hey, Flip, bring on the slops."