Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  "Excuse me. Do you know you're in Satan's clutches, sittin' here?"

  There was a woman next to him in the pew. She was about his age, maybe a little older, with straight, shiny brown hair worn shoulder length and an oval face that reminded him of the movie star Jean Arthur. She had a sensitive, delicately curved mouth, a small fine nose, and bold blue eyes. Although her green sport coat and gray skirt were showing signs of wear, the net effect was spectacular. She looked about a thousand percent better than any woman Flanagan had seen on the Long Beach Pike.

  "My name is Teresa Brownlow. I'm from the Adventist Church of the Second Coming. My father's the pastor. Each day I visit here to try to save at least one person — preferably a sailor like yourself."

  "Save?" Flanagan said.

  "This is the headquarters of the devil beast. It's right in the Bible, if you want to read it. Revelations Thirteen. The Roman Church is the Antichrist we're expectin' in these last days. Why don't you come with me to my daddy's church? I guarantee you that you'll never be the same man again, if you find Jesus with his help."

  "You personally guarantee that?"

  "I do," she said, ignoring the mockery in his voice.

  Daley hustled up to the pew. "I got the address," he whispered. "She's in West Los Angeles. I called her and she said come on out. She can only see us for fifteen minutes in the parlor, and another nun has to be present. But she's going to ask the pastor to meet us."

  Flanagan thought about trekking across Los Angeles to spend fifteen minutes with a couple of nuns on the dubious chance they might persuade the pastor to give them a free meal. He compared this to finding Jesus with the help of blue-eyed Teresa Brownlow. She was the first Protestant he had ever talked to in his life. Maybe he would turn the tables on her, convert her and save her soul. At the very least, it would be interesting.

  Daley was horrified when Flanagan informed him he was accepting Teresa's challenge. He refused to come along. In five minutes, Flanagan was riding back toward Long Beach with Teresa. About halfway there, they changed cars and headed for San Pedro. "Ever save anyone from Shanghai Red's?" Flanagan asked.

  "Oh, yes. Daddy and I have gone in there and saved I don't know how many," she said.

  "Where are you from?"

  "Oklahoma. We came out here in 1935, when the dust storms blew all the farms away. My daddy likes to say the Lord dried up his church but He didn't dry up his faith. He brought most of his congregation out here with him."

  "I saw the movie The Grapes of Wrath. With Henry Fonda."

  "Yes. I saw it too."

  "Was it really that bad?"

  The boldness faded from Teresa's blue eyes. She breathed a long trembling sigh. "The Lord turned His face away from so many good people. I never have been able to understand it."

  Flanagan glimpsed in her pinched cheeks, her tight mouth, a misery beyond his comprehension. He was blundering into a part of America about which he knew nothing. "We had a lot of people on relief in New York," he said.

  "We were too proud for that. We wouldn't ask for help. Awful things happened to some people."

  They got off the streetcar and walked through San Pedro. It was a cross between New York's Bowery and Greenwich Village, a warren of tottering flophouses, shabby cafes and thinly concealed bordellos, before which women lounged in the late afternoon sun. Sailors outnumbered civilians on every block.

  In a storefront in the middle of one of the grimier blocks, only about a dozen doors from the gaudy corner entrance of Shanghai Red's, was the Advent Church of the Second Coming.

  On the second floor of Shanghai Red's Cafe, Harold Semple sat at the end of the bed, staring at the naked body of a prostitute named Helen. She looked older than his mother. Her narrow breasts flopped on her chest like empty sacks. Ugly varicose veins bulged on her calves. In the cavern between her thighs he thought he saw scabs. A foul smell had filled the room the moment she took off her dress.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't want to do it."

  "Hey, tha's all right, sailor. Lot of guys don' wanna," Helen said. "Be surprised how many guys put on big act, come up here and just sit and look."

  Helen staggered to her feet, finished the drink Harold had bought her downstairs and put on her purple dress. She cinched the belt, fluffed her hennaed hair and held out her hand. "Just gimmy ten bucks and I won't say a thing."

  "Ten? You said it was five."

  "It's ten now, sonny. Or do you wan' me to go downstairs and tell your pals you couldn' get it up?"

  Tears in his eyes, Harold gave her the ten dollars. Downstairs, several hundred sailors and considerably fewer women sat at tables or reeled around the smoke-filled room, which reeked of spilled liquor and the chow mein the proprietor claimed he had learned to cook in Shanghai. No one seemed to know or care that chow mein was an American invention, unheard of in China. At least, that was what Flanagan told Semple when they met for a fleeting moment in the liberty boat.

  Helen hauled him back to the table where Jerome Wilkinson and his servitors were drinking boilermakers, shots of bourbon and glasses of beer. "Wow," Helen croaked, Wang-wanging her hand as if Semple had the best equipment she had seen since the flood. "You got a stud here, boys. Put him in the main battery turret. He knows how to fire a big one."

  "How much'd he pay you to say that?" asked a tall needle-nosed seaman first class.

  "Ten bucks," Helen said.

  Everyone guffawed, and Boatswain's Mate Wilkinson bought Helen another drink. He pulled out his wallet to pay for it and cursed. "Who's got some dough?"

  No one volunteered a cent. "Pay for that, Prettyboy," Wilkinson said.

  "That's all the money I've got," Semple said, handing the waiter a dollar. "I'm going back to the ship."

  "The hell you are," Wilkinson said. "This liberty's just warmin' up. We're gonna fill this wallet before midnight, and you're gonna help us. We'll have a good time in the bargain."

  He winked to his followers. Exultation glowed on their ugly faces. "A little fag bashing, boss?" asked Kraus, a squat thick-necked brute who served as Wilkinson's lieutenant.

  "You ready for it?"

  "Let's go!"

  Wilkinson borrowed five dollars from a boatswain's mate at a nearby table and they boarded a trolley that took them to downtown Los Angeles. Soon they were strolling through a mostly deserted park. It was about eight o'clock, and Semple was feeling queasy from the boilermakers he had been forced to drink on top of the foul chow mein at Shanghai Red's.

  "Sit on that bench," Wilkinson told him. "You won't have to wait ten minutes for one to come along. We'll be in the bushes right over there." He pointed to some shrubbery about ten feet away.

  "What am I supposed to do?" Semple asked.

  "You won't have to do a fuckin' thing. You're the bait, Prettyboy."

  In less than five minutes a man wearing a white suit and a yellow Panama hat strolled toward him on the darkened path. He had, black and white shoes like Semple's father had worn to church on summer Sundays, before he lost his job at Ford. The man sat down on the bench, about three feet away. "Hello," he said.

  "Are you waiting for a friend?"

  "No," Semple said.

  "What brings you here?"

  "I ran out of money. I didn't know what else to do."

  "I've got lots of money," the man said. "I've got a car right outside the park. What time do you have to go back to your ship?"

  "Four A.M."

  "Lots of time. We could have a lot of fun together."

  The man had a deep, liquid voice. Semple wondered if he was an actor.

  "What’s your name?"

  "Harold."

  "Mine's Peter."

  Suddenly Jerome Wilkinson and his four hulking followers surrounded them. "What the fuck are you tryin' to pull with our shipmate?" the boatswain's mate snarled.

  "Not a thing," Peter said, trying to stand up. "We were just talking."

  "The hell you say. You're a fuckin' queer. Sailors don't like qu
eers. Don't you know that?"

  "That's news to me," the man said.

  Wilkinson punched Peter in the face so hard he went backward over the bench onto the grass. "Grab him," Wilkinson ordered.

  The four dragged the groaning man across the grass into the shrubbery. Behind it was a secluded flower garden, with statuary and stone benches. Semple followed them dazedly, afraid to protest, terrified they would all end up in jail. One of the four extracted the man's wallet. "How much?" Wilkinson asked.

  "Plenty, boss."

  "You know what you're gonna to do now? You're gonna taste some Navy cock," Wilkinson said, standing over the man. "You're gonna suck off each one of us."

  Someone dragged the man to his knees. "No," he sobbed. "Please —"

  It was all being done in darkness shot through with streaks of light from a park lamp on the walk, just beyond the bench. Semple only had glimpses of Wilkinson and the others unbuttoning their pants. He listened to their gurgles of laughter, Peter's strangled protests. Semple stumbled into the shrubbery and threw up. Oh God, he prayed, save me. Why did you condemn me to this hell on earth?

  "Prettyboy," Wilkinson barked. "Where the hell are you? It's your turn."

  "No," he sobbed. "I don't want to."

  "What the fuck are you talkin' about?" Wilkinson dragged him over to the man. "Unbutton his fuckin' pants, boys."

  The laughing foursome swiftly obeyed. One of them grabbed Semple's penis and thrust it into Peter's mouth. He felt more than his penis — he felt his whole self sliding down a tunnel of soft slithery flesh, Sempleness was being obliterated, Haroldness was vanishing. His penis swelled as it had in midnight moments in his bed when he let his hand caress it. That was supposed to be a sin, but everybody including his older brothers laughed about jerking off, but this was unquestionably sin beyond laughter into terror, mystery and pleasure, incredible shivers of these three words in one enormous rush down Peter's gurgling throat.

  Oh, God, not my fault. Why didn't you stop it?

  And what came next. Why didn't He stop that? Wilkinson and the four apes began punching and kicking Peter until he lay on the grass moaning and sobbing, begging them to stop. That only brought more laughter for the fucking fag crybaby, another round of punches and kicks. Semple could only conclude God was not listening. He seemed to have taken the night off.

  "Niggers and Jews. We got a lot in common," Amos Cartwright said. "I been thinkin' about it. Solomon, your old Bible king, he married the Queen of Sheba, right? She was as black as I am."

  "Hey, I haven't thought about the Bible since my bar mitzvah," Marty Roth said.

  "You oughta think about it. I read that book three times before I was your age."

  "The hell you say."

  "Truth."

  Roth burped spectacularly. He had just downed one of the most fantastic dinners he had ever eaten, pork fried in a fatty gravy that tasted of strange vegetables. He did not eat pork regularly, because his maternal grandfather, who lived with them in their Bronx apartment, refused to touch it. But he had no objection to it. He was an American. This was American food he had never tasted before. It was cooked in a little hole in the wall in South Los Angeles, in a section of the city that was almost entirely black.

  But the food was only a small part of his exhilaration.

  Throughout dinner, Cartwright had talked to Roth about what a watertender did, why it was the most important rating on the ship. Watertenders had to know exactly how to mingle oil, air and water inside the boiler to create the superheated steam that was the lifeblood of the Jefferson City's power system. Too much air and not enough water, and the boiler's pipes could melt. Too much water and not enough air, and water could get into the turbines, wrecking them. They had to be constantly alert for signs a boiler was faltering under the wear and tear of this terrific demand.

  Brains, that was what Cartwright insisted a water tender and any sailor who worked in the fire room had to have. He assumed Roth had them because he was Jewish. Roth was tempted to tell him flatly that he was wrong. He had never seen much point in studying. His father had gotten an engineering degree from City College after World War I, and what good had it done him? The textile plant that he had managed in Port Chester had gone bankrupt in 1933 and he had been glad to get a boring job in the U.S. Customs Department, inspecting imported cloth. But something about Cartwright's presumption, his pride in the importance of the forward fire room and his delight in explaining how it worked stirred a curiosity in Roth. Maybe he could learn a few things about those bewildering pipes and gauges and boilers. He would give it a try.

  Outside the restaurant, four young blacks strutted past them wearing the wildest toot suits Roth had ever seen. The pants were bright blue and ballooned out at least six inches on each side of their legs. Their yellow coats almost reached their knees. Gold chains clanked beneath them.

  "Whyn't you take the fuckin' money you spend on them duds and buy yourself some books?" Amos Cartwright said. "Put somethin' in your head instead of on your ass."

  "Go tell it to the admiral, old man," one of them said.

  "I did tell it to him. That's why I'm wearin' this rate," Cartwright said.

  He pointed to the three-bladed propeller on his upper sleeve, with WT and three inverted stripes beneath it.

  The young blacks just stared and shrugged. "What's it say?" one asked.

  "Watertender first class."

  That broke them up. "Shee-it," another one said. "What kinda brains it take to tend water? My momma can do that."

  "Your momma probably too busy tendin' your uncles and cousins to tend anything else," Cartwright said.

  "Your momma look like she tended a gorilla."

  "Hey, you're pretty good at the dozens," Cartwright said. "Let's go down to Jubilee's and I'll buy you boys a drink. I ain't as mean as I look."

  "Is that a fact?" one of them asked Roth.

  "Absolutely," Roth said, amazed that a riot had not started over the exchange of insults about their mothers. In the Bronx, where he and his friends had had a few brushes with Irish gangs, those accusations would have started a neighborhood war. He knew nothing about the dozens.

  "How come you got to go to an ofay for a buddy?"

  "He ain't an ofay. He's a Jew," Cartwright said.

  "Us and them, we're on the short end of the stick and always has been. Don't you read what Hitler's doin'?"

  "Hey, what the fuck we care about Hitler? It's the Japs that want to chew our asses off. This is California, old man."

  "We're goin' out there to stop them in just about two weeks. Come on and have a drink with us and wish us luck."

  "Two weeks we'll be in the Army. We're goin' to have our own good time tonight. Coupla lamb daps waitin' to fuss over these duds. But here's one for luck, old man." The two of them tapped Cartwright's outstretched hand.

  "The minute you get in that Army, start buckin' for sergeant," he said. "Watch what a sergeant does. Write it all down and read it over and over."

  "Yeah. Yeah."

  Cartwright sighed and led Roth down the street to Jubilee's, another storefront with a bar full of drinkers and a jazz combo playing blues in the back. "I been to Harlem and North Philadelphia and West Baltimore spreadin' that message," he said. "Rise up. You got to bide your time and, rise up!"

  "How'd you get your rate?"

  "I asked Captain McKay if I could study for it, and he said it was fine with him."

  "Captain McKay? The same guy we just got?"

  "Yeah. He was captain of a destroyer I was on. Course I always had it in mind. My granddaddy was a rated man, a boiler tender, before World War I. The Navy had seven or eight hundred rated niggers back then. After the war they only enlisted us as mess stewards, and you had to be from the South. They figured Southern niggers knew their place. I had to move to Charleston to get in the fuckin' Navy!"

  For a moment the expression on Amos Cartwright's face made Roth wonder if he was going to throw his drink through the mirror on t
he other side of the bar. But he continued in the same calm voice.

  "Captain McKay knew all about it. He's a historian, you know. He remembers things. His people went out to Kansas before the Civil War to fight the slavers, and that made him inclined to help me out. Keep your mouth shut about it. He's goin' to have enough problems on the Jeff City without everyone knowin' he gave Nigger Cartwright a chance to get his rate."

  On the tiny stage at the rear, a big black woman began singing,

  "If you want the thrill of love,

  I've been through the mill of love.

  Old love, new love, every love but true love.

  Love for sale. Appetizin' young love for sale."

  "That's Big Bertha," Cartwright said. "You and me, we're gonna buy some of that love before the night's over."

  Cartwright saw the alarm on Roth's face and started to laugh. "Don't worry. She'll find a filly your age. Drink up."

  "No—listen. I'm sorry."

  He wanted to be this man's kind of sailor. But he had to remain faithful to Sylvia Morison and those hours in that pink and white bedroom on Central Park West. He had that memory at the center of his body and he did not want to let it go. He started to explain it to Cartwright, sure he would never understand. To his amazement the watertender nodded. "I shipped out that way once. It's okay. I just wish you luck. When I got back to Philadelphia, I found another guy, bigger 'n' blacker than me in her bedroom."

  Marty Roth gulped his drink. The liquor swirled in his brain. He had never drunk anything stronger than beer before in his life. Cartwright had had at least six bourbons during dinner, with no visible effect. What was happening here? Roth felt as if he were voyaging down a midnight river into a dark sea. The dim bar, the Negro faces all around him, Cartwright hulking over him — was he being summoned like his first cousin, the family hero, whose picture stood bordered in black on his grandfather's dresser?