Pirate Talk or Mermalade

by Terese Svoboda

  And where were you?

  You had dresses a’plenty until Cyrus washed up.

  You did nothing about him, always mooning over getting the bone or moaning over your brother, the foul pirate. Give me that shawl back.

  From where, pray tell, do you get the cotton for your petticoats? Stolen of the pirate. The cocoa for your cups in the morning? The pirate. The lovely Madeira? Even the ribbon in your hair be blue only on account of the pirate’s indigo. The foul pirate.

  Don’t you think Cyrus is a handsome one? He’s four years your younger.

  Quiet, woman. I’ll not have you scull the bottom for daggers. I will take the Hope to the last port if you drive me to it, and leave you behind. I will, even though I fear a voyage at sea more than I fear your noise and bother. Keep the shawl.

  Cyrus! Cyrus!

  I am so easily rid of?

  We have no children. You were too timid.

  That is your own doing. Or not doing. But this too can change, knowing the temper of your heart and of Cyrus’ desire. But not with myself as witness. I will sign ship’s papers today, I will.

  I believe you will. And let it be a long voyage out—on the Hope.

  My luck will leave with me.

  Perhaps—but what if Cyrus will not have me?

  You think so little of me that I must bear such a question? Fruit falls from the trees here, winter cannot harm you. You have your shawl. But I would hoard your petticoats too if I were you. The daughters of others are younger.

  And eager, even for a tradesman such as he. You should send for me then, as soon as you come into money.

  And blacken my future further?

  How will you rise in the morning with a starched collar and leggings without holes? And eat as quickly as you can seat yourself? Answer me.

  I now know the compromises a man makes. You are an expensive charwoman who spares me nothing. The years I have spent with you.

  Two—no more.

  Put that pot down.

  I shall not until you receive damage.

  Amazon!

  10

  1723 High Seas

  The sails like a curtain, stars and then no stars.

  My mother loved the line, especially the rope as thick as the mate’s wrist. Even my brother worked the line, in secret, though on land, not the sea. You’d like my brother, though you’d put fear into him with all your fierce tattoos.

  A man must be his own placard if he has lived out a legend. Rain behind that swell of stars. There—through the straights.

  A squall?

  A squall.

  That last lightning nearly stopped my heart.

  Those were good flashes.

  Luggams says in the worse of storms, the lightning goes green and runs up the rigging.

  Hear the singing?

  No singing in these straights. Luggams hates the singing.

  It can’t be the fish, singing.

  Luggams forbids all singing whatsoever now that Shanks is gone. He doesn’t like the caterwaul of cats neither but cats we have to have, for the vermin.

  Aye. The pigs we shipped before would at least dance, they would eat out of your hand for a sniff of bread.

  Pigs will eat your hand.

  A pirate bunch, pigs. I wish we had some still.

  If you eat at all, best eat in private, with yourself alone on the poop deck, or else someone will fight you for it.

  Not for me the poop deck. The stink!

  Clean as the Pope’s hand. All that is left to eat is shoes, and those who have them have chewed them soft as chamois.

  I think Luggams chews on gold coin.

  His teeth show it. A doubloon on a starving ship is as good as a shell cast upon a beach.

  The second mate’s tied a Spanish coin to his line to lure the fish.

  Good luck to him! I do miss the turtle’s banging.

  A great turtle it was, two hundred weight if it were one.

  Now there’s a beast—it didn’t eat for four months and still tasted sweet.

  I once had luck fishing in the night. Once only, and didn’t eat it, though the fish be bigger than even that turtle.

  Why not, by the boils of St. Augustine!

  You don’t hear the singing?

  No songs, none. Boil the sand inside that whale’s eye you pocket and eat that.

  That’s hardly fish. You’d do better to keelhaul yourself and pray you scrape barnacles off the bottom of the boat with your chest. They attend only to god, these fish below.

  Minister fish, a whale. The second mate will catch nothing.

  Or the fish will catch him, like Shanks, out from the bottom of a wave. That shark leapt like a marlin to catch him. I felt sorrow for the shark, having Shanks to chew. Here, wet this bit of knot and snap it at the watch in the crow’s nest. Leeward, now.

  Those were real curses. My brother used to say pirates cursed for nothing, just to put fear into anyone’s hearing, but I think we curse most often to hear ourselves alive.

  More like fiends than men. Let us curse altogether and get the sails up.

  Bloody sails. I do miss the Yo, ho, ho. I wish Luggams would have it.

  Turn your head thus and sing yourself:Booty, ho! By the blood of Our Lady.

  Booty, ho! Put gold to my shingles

  and pied silver to my latch

  and teeth all gold in a row—

  Booty, ho!

  Mind the line there.

  I’ll bury my gold and live out my days full to the ears with grog and no one will come around accusing me.

  To have lost every penny of the last run.

  They were bigger than us.

  Bigger, ha. Too bad about the booty. You voted for Madagascar?

  The Cape, the Cape is the way. Prizes going to the bottom of the ocean for want of pirates at the Cape.

  We’ll need a heap of wind to get there.

  And a bit of bread or a haunch. With a spit turning right on deck, and dandyfunk, and flip in our cups to the top.

  Gunpowder punch! Wait, the line be fouled there.

  I’ll lend you a hand. That last island we tried, there was a lad who swam out—He looked so like yourself. A copy in black.

  So they say. ‘Tis a favorite island of mine, it is. I’ve stopped and gone down a dozen times.

  Others have called it a little Boston, after you.

  Once or twice, I admit, we’ve had to pull anchor in haste. See the dawn star off port?

  Aye.

  That’s no storm coming before it with the daylight—a sail’s upon us.

  Ahoy!

  Ship ahoy! Arm yourselves!

  It’s a terrible moment when you thrust your head over the side, a-scrambling for purchase when they could stick your throat so easy—

  Aye, and we go ahead in this wind so slowly you’d think we were towing our pots astern and the mattresses.

  Huzzah!

  11

  A Day Later

  Ocean makes me sick.

  Grog makes you groggy. Land made you landbound. Drink a little saltwater to let the sea settle in. Pirates always take a dose just before the swells start.

  I won’t fall for drinking one of your wee grogs a second round. There I was, about to land and start a new life—

  Of clocks and watches! Not even your beloved bone. I’ve saved you twice tonight, once from the other cutthroats aboard, and once from your own life.

  Did you have to hit me bang on the pate quite so hard?

  You’ll get used to it.

  I’ll never be getting used to taking blows from my own brother.

  This is a pirate ship.

  Yes, yes, so they say. Just make up a paper that declares you took me by force then I’ll give you no trouble. You have me now, brother, in the burden of a prisoner.

  Hush. You’re no prisoner. Luggams remembers you. He’s taken you on to pull my mate’s line.

  Is that so? I am sorry to have killed your mate.

  You did not have to run him q
uite through.

  I did! I did have to run him through! He would’ve done the same to me.

  My mate was fair that way, though you would have liked him. From Boston, where the Tattoo King put his marks upon him. Here, take the sail hand-over-hand with the needle and mend these exploded holes. At least the man had sons a-plenty.

  And you have regained a brother.

  But lost a cutlass.

  He fell to the deep at my single thrust.

  He did. Throw me the line.

  But I thought pirates kept chests full of weapons, everything shared, that’s what I thought, and then divided it in the pirate way, which means, for one, I should have seen a bit of what we were hauling that you ate right after the taking? At least a bit of it. When does the cheese from my boat stop at me, with the haunches of lamb, sheep and beef, given out in the proper pirate’s way? On a regular vessel at least they offer around the gristle.

  Stop, you must stop. Every boat rides its own sea, whatever it becomes. Do you think we sign in a circle, the way they tell it, or swear upon a hatchet instead of the Bible? Smith, the quartermaster, tells it true.

  They call him quartermaster, this lawless brine-mouthed bunch?

  This be the pirate life, says Smith, the new pirate’s: he should be tarred so that his skin turns pale, as pale as a turnip—that is, after all the peeling—and that it is the paleness that kills the cowards and not the sharks he screams to be fed to, all blown up with white after the tar’s gone, and bleeding red blood through the skin. Pale as a turnip—it is a nice turn of the tongue. That’s the start of a pirate life got right, the way Smith tells it. You wait.

  A story like that’s why I prefer belowdecks, I’ll take belowdecks anytime. Without the sea in my face, I can think of the land.

  No air below except a rat’s cough. I’m for sleeping under the sheets midships and chancing I’ll get my throat cut when someone slips on board to right the wrongs and retake the treasure, such as we did on your boat. A great wont of treasure on your boat I might add, unless we count the watch plaitings.

  Treasure for some. You didn’t have to throw every bale over.

  You won’t be wanting those plaitings now anyway, that job is gone. You can get the boat’s works set straight for us instead.

  Set me off on land!

  Here be the Smith I was telling you of.

  The two of ye quarrel so, you’d think you were made of one mother, bad luck to us and to you both. They say brothers save each other and none of the rest.

  We are not so much brothers, not really. Not according to our Ma. Besides, we quarrel away, and stick the loser.

  I fought with the brothers Bungleston who raged the seas the back end of the ‘80s. Aye, I served under the Roger—not the jolly, mind you—and for fun, one brother would take a plank and magic it right across the water, over one wave and another, and sometimes he would signal to us, all the while sinking into the foam. Fish took the other brother when he, for spite, at last put the board under himself and sank straight down. Brothers they were for sure.

  A danger to themselves and others.

  But this boy’s got arms on him that could lift a barrel of sand and a face that would belay a mother, if she saw two of them together. You boys keep the deck quiet with yourselves if you can, and take the watch whilst I have a hand of whist, and wait.

  Aye, aye.

  Aye. Aye, aye, aye.

  You are giddy, fearing for your life.

  I can’t stop laughing. What were the chances of my own brother falling prey to us? At least I can laugh, I am falling down laughing at that. It’s time to laugh.

  We are the only two aboveboard now.

  Not so loud. We have a job to do.

  We?

  Tie the wheel down, brother.

  What is about to happen?

  Luggams knows. He’s folded his spyglass like a snail’s trick and taken it below.

  Brother?

  I’m the pirate captain now, like atop the whale. If you weren’t so green, you could scale the ropes and sing out verses from the f’osicle in honor of Luggams who hates them.

  You remember wrong about that whale. It were me atop.

  You were gouging at the eye, the bloody eye. I stood atop and heard it sing.

  It were the woman Peters took, singing.

  She couldn’t sing, she could only count.

  You weren’t listening. I wish I had a cutlass. I don’t like the quiet.

  They do keep a chest full of cutlasses below.

  I knew it so.

  They sort them after a boat-taking such as yours. Myself, I snatch any one that comes my way. Roger and Ebert, the plunder lads, they’ll be joining us at the next ocean.

  I’d like one with bone at the hilt or a ruby and a broad blade like an Indian’s.

  Leave the whalebone and watches and you might make a pirate yet.

  A cutlass, just for protection. To cut my way back to land.

  Hear that?

  You could hear a bream breathing. That’s nothing.

  You don’t know the half of the fear that swims under to get at you. All seamen worth their salt—and that’s heaps of salt—know there’s strangeness under their feet, about how it’s us or our cousins at the very bottom, walking around as usual, breathing in and out the actual water.

  It’s a strange life, the sea life, I’ll grant you that.

  Soon you’ll have the look of the strange yourself.

  All this glug-glug-glug of grog, and the hold, and me with a bump on my head.

  One of the others would’ve quartered you with two blows.

  This be the price I pay, this and the yo-ho-ho. I hate the water more than before. Hear it again?

  That’s weather, that’s nothing.

  A hole’s starting in the side of the ship, a hole where someone’s swum under with a poleaxe.

  You’re just trying to frighten me. That sound’s been breathing since the fishes swam, since the sun came up on your quartermaster Smith telling his story. You don’t hear anything.

  They’re sharpening their cutlasses on each other’s cutlasses. They’ll be over the side even sooner and sharper. We have to go first.

  Some ship must’ve seen you take mine.

  Water’s seeping into the side of the ship. We’re going to have to swim for it.

  There’s no one in sight.

  Only the Malagasy swim, with their daggers in their mouths, and so jolly the rest of the time.

  I’ll tell them I was taken by force, I’ll say I never did what pirates do except that you would kill me if I didn’t. Let’s hide.

  You landlubbing coward. Take this pig knife. It will make a pike if you lashed it to the mop with a length of line and twist the line double. We’ll board them first, as quick as they show themselves.

  With all the cutlasses you save for yourself, you’ll soon be safe and lifting grog in Marseilles, impressing the women with your pirating.

  Stop kicking at the door. They’ll think you’ve been hung and never come out. You have to make it sound like happiness. A jig. Like this. Dance the way you danced with Cap’n Peters’ girl.

  I never knew you could pick up your feet like that.

  Ma could, when she wasn’t practicing to dangle. Or when she dangled. The fiddler knew.

  Let’s wave the white flag before we stain it with our own blood, let’s tell them Luggams made us do it and show them Luggams. If I hoist this—

  Keep your shirt on.

  Before I die, let me show you the bone I carved on the voyage out, bought with the last of my money. “Man Sawing at a Tree on the Occasion of His Betrothing.”

  The title is bigger than the piece.

  Aye.

  Don’t break the door down. Someone is as liable to come through with a plate of brisket as with a knife.

  We’re the plate of brisket. Don’t you see? We’re the tasty chum and that’s why they’ve left us up here, to draw them out. I think the deck leans. They’re counting
the powders and purses below.

  These coves we’re passing do stink of the Spanish or at least of a Moor tied up in them, burying treasure by the chest as if it were a crop. I say, two boats in a week! What luck!

  Hullo! Over here! Bring them on!

  They come on like flies.

  I’ll clean the foredeck with this fork. You get the others up out of their coffins belowdecks—let them fight to their ends and not ours.

  12

  Hours Later

  Get up now and quit your moaning. Best we mop the deck with the blood of the others.

  My leg.

  Get up, I say. I think we’re the last. No one else is looking alive.

  Leg.

  You can move that leg. You can, I saw you move it when that Moor went after you.

  See his cutlass, how it shines—it shines like a jewel in a jar.

  Move your leg.

  Tomorrow. See the light on the edge of it?

  I’ll move your leg myself then.

  My leg!

  Don’t scream. Give me your kerchief to stop the blood. And your cutlass.

  Not the one I wrested from three brigands and a captain with just your pigknife held between my teeth?

  Magnificent, you were. So fierce their eyes didn’t blink but you had them shaking. You slashed and slashed. I wondered where you found your piracy so quick, it must be in the family. Now, give me the cutlass.

  You’ll have my own knife at your throat, you will, just like I had the captain with it.

  Want me to pull out the bits from your leg with just this pig knife and my fingers? There be holes in the sail and gulls in the rigging and dead men rolling the deck in their blood, and you won’t loan me the use of your cutlass to save yourself, however it was obtained?

  So long as I can see it.

  You’ll feel it.

  Wait, wait—where is it going?

  There’s coals left from the cannonwork—I must burn you to stop the blood.

  No, no, not that.

  I can slip the cutlass from your fingers after all your insides have rotted. A fine cutlass it is too, with those rubies in the hilt, or is it all my brother’s blood?

  It’s my foot I can’t move, nothing’s wrong with my leg. This foot is stone.

  Watch the flame, watch the flame.

  Why can’t I faint like a girl?

  Just breathe steady instead of making all that noise. Bite the rope like it was Ma’s, served up in the soup, and breathe.