Fool's Gold

by Steve Stroble

letter?”

  Andrea fetched paper and pen for him and said that she would walk with him to the post office when he was finished. “It will give Mr. Thompson here a chance to sleep off his drinking. As usual, he’s downing three drinks to every one that a guest has. And you can sleep down here until we sail. No sense in you having to share an inn with a bunch of drunken sailors. Besides, they might kidnap you to be a part of their crew.”

  “She be the queen of the seven seas. Can’t be having you getting yerself shanghaied. That’s all we need. Happened to me once, you know. I was minding me own business in a pub down by Bristol and…”

  “Oh, shut up for at least a while, Arnold.” Andrea scolded him. “You go and take a nap. I’ll wake you up for your supper.”

  “Okay, woman. Keep your bloomers on.” Arnold danced a jig as he climbed the stairs. “To listen to you you’d think I don’t knows what’s what in this world.”

  Rudolph smiled at their antics. He then penned what he hoped would be adequate:

  Dear Mother and Father:

  I am here in Rotterdam. I discovered that Thomas sailed for America. The man who told me is also helping me to go to America if I will work for him to get his farm established.

  I know I promised to be gone for only two weeks but fear that I cannot come home yet. I must go after Thomas. Otherwise, there will be no justice. I hope you will understand. One day I will return to visit or perhaps you too can come to America. I fear there will be a revolution in our homeland. Too many speak of how everything must change there. I am glad that America already had their revolution so I will be safe. Tell everyone there I miss all of them very much. Please tell Marta I am taking good care of her family portrait. And if she put a curse on me please ask her to take it away. So far my luck is bad. Do you think she has cursed me? I hope not.

  Your son,

  Rudolph

  As Andrea led the way to the post office she talked to Rudolph as his mother had. This made him wonder if Andrea had unofficially adopted him. She spoke in German to make the conversation easier.

  “So you are certain going to America is right?”

  Rudolph fidgeted. “I…I don’t know. But I know that I must go there to find Thomas.”

  “But don’t you think your family will miss you?”

  “Yah. But don’t you think your husband would miss me helping him on your farm?” He pondered whether Andrea was trying to convince him to return home. If so, he decided he would appeal directly to Arnold. But that could prove difficult without Andrea acting as translator for them. More bad luck, he fumed silently. Her reply surprised him.

  “I guess I should be thankful that the good Lord did send you our way at that. There is no way we could do it ourselves. Even after you leave us we will still need help.”

  “But by then you will have enough crops coming in you can sell. Hiring someone will be no problem for you then.”

  “I guess you’re right about that.”

  Andrea turned into the tiny room that served as a post office. The Dutch clerk’s understanding of German ensured that the transaction went smoothly. Rudolph thought out loud as they left. He needed to relieve at least a part of the turmoil that boiled inside of him.

  “I guess my father will be angry.” He tried to picture him reading the posted letter. “Even though I worked hard at the brewery he still needed me for every harvest. He always feared the weather would destroy the crops. Being a farmer is so hard all the time.”

  “Well at least the weather where we’re going shouldn’t be too very much different than Bavaria. Did you get lots of snow there?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Andrea steered their course to one of Rotterdam’s many fish markets. She carefully searched through the piles of fish that had been taken from the North Sea or the delta that stretched to the east. She smiled when she found a plump cod and frowned as she haggled with the fishmonger until a deal was struck. It took a few moments for Andrea to get the bargain she believed was rightfully hers.

  “Don’t ever pay what they be asking.” She lectured Rudolph as they headed home with their catch. “Not many things in life are worth what people be claiming.”

  4

  “So how’s yer sea legs holding up?”

  Rudolph kept vomiting his breakfast into the roiling waters as Arnold calmly tapped out the ashes from his pipe and refilled it with the Dutch tobacco that he loved. Even the smell of unlit tobacco made Rudolph queasier. He wiped his mouth with his dirty shirtsleeve.

  “I wish not on das Boot.” The tobacco smoke quickly sent him from the downwind to the upwind side of Arnold. “Ich bin Krank.”

  “Krank?”

  “I sick.”

  “Well, don’t fret yourself none now. Happens to the best of us. You’ll get used to it.”

  Dehydrated and dizzy for days, Rudolph clutched on to no such hope. “I die, yah? Only feel little besser on deck. Below deck always Krank.”

  “Don’t be saying that. It be bad luck if the crew be talking that way.” Arnold grabbed Rudolph’s chin and turned his head. “Guess you’re sorta green about the gills at that. Tell you what. I’ll run along now and chat up the captain. Maybe he can have you work up on deck for the rest of our voyage.”

  “Danka, Danka, mein Herr.”

  Half boat, half ship, the vessel that the Thompsons and Rudolph traveled on used both steam and wind to propel it across the stormy North Atlantic. To pay for his fare, Rudolph had been banished to what the crew called the dungeon: the belly of the ship where he and others fed coal into the fires that created steam to power the huge paddlewheel. During his first shift Rudolph had renamed the dungeon as hell. Fortunately most of the crew befriended the newest member of those who did their best to keep both Captain and passengers safe and content.

  “Rudolph? We should be calling you Samson instead.” The one assigned to teach Rudolph his duties had said during his first shift. “I’ve never seen anyone shovel coal as fast as you do.”

  After days of losing most of what he ate due to the ship’s constant swaying, Rudolph’s strength had waned and the one who had nicknamed him tried to comfort him. “Now you’re acting like Samson after Delilah cut off all his hair. But don’t you worry none now mate. We ain’t Philistines down here. The passengers think we are but we ain’t. We be civilized as them. We won’t poke out yer eyes like happened to Samson. Wouldn’t be fair not to let you see all them cute little gals that be there in Boston town.”

  Rudolph smiled forlornly at such talk. His thoughts were now focused on either the past, which had been much easier than feeding a fire for six hours at a time, or his future, which he vowed would never include another crossing of an ocean. He longed for the sweet and sour odors of the brewery that he had deserted without notice. His dehydration made him dream at night of tasting the many kinds of beer that he once had brewed there. Even the toil of farming was preferable to the tortures of sailing. At times he pondered how his family was handling the harvest without him. Now, as he sweated and cursed, he wondered why he had traded a happy life for the agonies of a boiler room.

  Meanwhile, Arnold pleaded his case. “You know we goes way, back, Captain.”

  “What do you want now, you scoundrel? You stuck me with a landlubber who sails for nothing so’s he can be puking up his guts every five minutes. I’d be better off hooking up with Davy Jones than you, you buccaneer.”

  “But Captain Smith, sir. You knows I can’t afford the fare for the boy. Have mercy on him, Captain. For old times sake, eh?”

  The captain gritted his teeth. “You know, I don’t think anyone except maybe Jesus Himself ever had to endure more fools than I have.”

  Arnold choked on the smoke that he was puffing from his pipe. Whenever the captain mentioned Jesus it only meant that his anger was rising faster than any barometer.

  “Maybe I best be going?”

  “No, no. Let’s get this over with. That’s probably blasphemy, what I said about Jesus. But
even poor old Job only had to endure three fools for friends. His wife didn’t treat him any better, either. Me? I have more such so-called friends than I have toes and fingers put together. Everyone wants something for nothing, by God! Especially you.” His bony finger jabbed at the one petitioning him. To Arnold it appeared to be a cutlass about to sever his head.

  Arnold cleared his throat. “You’re right, Cap. I ought to be ashamed of meself.”

  Captain Zebulon Smith arose and began to pace in the confines of his small cabin. The rhythmical sounds produced by his shiny black boots as they hit the oak floorboards calmed both of them.

  “All this reminds me of the first time you were on one of my ships.”

  “Thanks be to the Almighty that it was you as me first captain. Anyone else would’ve thrown me overboard to feed the fishes.”

  “Sometimes I wish that I had. But you were only ten. Besides, like a fool I promised your dear old mother to watch over you.”

  Arnold shifted in his chair. “Was I all that bad of a cabin boy then?”

  Smith’s head shook with laughter. “All you did was listen to the crew tell their yarns of where they’d been and what they’d done. I’d probably have been better off if I’d stationed you below deck with them. Of course then you might’ve become a pirate like some of them did later on.”

  “But what a voyage it was, Captain! The way you took us around the Cape. The crew feared we were all going down with the ship. But you showed them. I