Fo'castle Waltz

He and I were up on the poopdeck watching the big tow lines that tied us to the tugboat. We were being towed down that narrow strip of river backwards since the ship couldn't be turned. We were leaving Rio Santiago to ship further south.

"Yeah, take my advice, kid. Don't let it get ya—it's a lousy life."

We leaned on the rail in silence. Then after a few minutes he went on.

"Every goddam time we make New York I tell myself— all right, that's enough. So I'll go back to school—"

"School?"

"Yeah, school. I've just got a couple more years to go to get me an M.D. But for the past six years—it's been like this. I get back to port, get tanked up, mixed up with some dame. Then I'd be broke and have to ship out again. God, what a goddam fool I've been. Don't let this life get ya, kid. Stick to your studying. Be an artist!"

I felt a glow of gratitude and sympathy for the Second, and started to tell him when he broke in with:

"Ya goddamned, fat-headed, bilge-livered fool! Whyn'tyou watch that goddam line—? Grab it!"

One of the hawsers had loosened and was slipping over the side and the other was so taut it would snap in a minute—and our ship was gently swinging toward the river bank. We retied those lines. That ended our friendly conversation and I never had any other personal contact with the Second until the time he kicked me up on the boat deck and almost knocked me overside.

We had shoved off from Rio Santiago late in the afternoon and it was almost dark before our ship had been dragged far enough down that narrow strip of river that emptied into the wide-mouthed La Platte so that the tugs could turn us around and tow the S.S. Hermanita by its forward end. There was something undignified about having your ship yanked by her stem down that muddy river and all the crew felt it. Maybe that's what disturbed the Second.

Just before we hoisted our gangplank Perry and the Polack had been marched back to the ship under the custody of the sailor-boy cop (still smiling) who'd led them away. All the starch had been taken out of Perry. He was unnaturally quiet; the Polack grinned sheepishly as usual. They looked paler, thinner, and both needed shaves. That spell in the calaboose seemed to have tamed Perry and he didn't talk that evening, but there was a gleam in his eye that indicated that conniver had "some inside dope."

Mush wore his worried look to supper. He told me Philip and Sparks had been left ashore. They had gone up to Buenos Aires on the early morning train to get some radio equipment. Sparks had taken Philip along as an interpreter. They had been told we were shoving off this afternoon. Mush bet it was that bastard Sparks' fault they missed the boat.

The old pink-eyed guy consoled Mush. He had been up at the wheel as we pulled out and had heard the Captain instruct our pilot (the same old pirate who took our ship into Rio Santiago) to carry a letter back to our ship's agent in port. He had told the pilot the letter contained orders to send those guys down to Ingeniero White—our next port—and that he, the pilot, must inform the port police every courtesy and consideration must be shown these men, or Captain Brandt would be mad.

He was as fond of Philip as we all were. I wondered if he would have been so solicitous if Sparks alone had been left ashore.

That guy wasn't very popular with the crew. He was a Southerner, not the slow, gentle, drawling kind like Slim, the Georgia Boy, but a snappy, crackling tarheel. Perhaps what disturbed me most about that long, wiry, bespectacled guy was the way he wore his thick black hair parted carefully in the center, and he always talked quickly and long as if what he was saying was very important.

On some of those long pleasant evenings on the poopdeck, as we were coming down, he'd join us. He picked Al, Mush, and me to talk to and would freeze out anyone else who wanted to kid around with us by inviting us three up to his shack up above the boat deck.

We went up there a few times. His radio shack was a pleasant place, and we'd have liked it a lot better if he wasn't there. He'd stretch out on a padded, swivel chair—the only one in the cabin—fold his long, white hands under his chin, and yammer away for hours at a time. Once he told about the time when he was a guard at a military prison for conscientious objectors.

"Come sunup, we'd march 'em out to the truck garden 'bout a half mile from the camp. We'd keep 'em on the double till we got out to the field. Then we guards would stand around in the shade watching those bastards in the hot sun hoeing, pulling weeds, and stuff like that. Then we'd march 'em back for dinner.