The hold appeared three-quarters full, if anyone was keeping track.
6
The days which led up to our desperate attempt to wrest command of the ship from Harding and his henchmen are blurs of barely-suppressed horror at the actions of the man who had been placed over us and who had become some sort of modern-day version of Bligh even though we had done nothing to deserve such punishment.
Harding’s murder of an Egyptian sailor, caught stealing water from the galley in the middle of the cold Goan night, was perhaps the trigger, though we had seen and ignored many other triggering events. Though a smirking Harding swore to us from his perch above our heads that he had only lectured the dirty Arab, at which point the sailor had jumped him and wrested his sidearm from its holster and blown his own brains out all over the captain’s quarters, we felt a sort of emptiness in the pit of our stomachs. I know that Sullivan and Bentz, my trusted lieutenants, acknowledged feeling the same - an emptiness born of desperate fear and hatred.
For we knew that the Egyptian was too weak to wrestle a giant such as Harding for a weapon, and we were certain that had he managed such a feat, the 9mm slug would have splattered Harding’s brain onto the deck. Any one of us would have done the same.
“Core, you gotta take command,” Sullivan whispered later, as we reclined under the makeshift tent I’d stretched from a lifeboat davit to the rail. Almost everyone had given up their cabins or crew’s quarters during the day, when the sun baked the inside of the ship like a Tandoori oven. During the day the deck had become a sea of tarpaulins and stretched blankets, as men swung from homemade hammocks and tried not to think of their misery even as the chants of the porters threatened to overwhelm their brains with the constant reminder of where we were.
“Do you hear me, lad?” Sullivan was older than me by only a few years, but he’d taken to calling me “lad” as if he was an old man. Come to think of it, he looked older. We all did.
“I hear you. Bentz says the same thing. But if we fail, Harding’s going to have us all tried for mutiny. Those he and Gunther don’t gun down. Or maybe he’ll kill us himself.”
“Yeah, maybe he’ll kill us anyway.” Sullivan punched my arm. “So we ain’t got much to lose. This kinda life ain’t so much like livin’, it’s more like floatin’ in limbo. Or a coffin.”
The anchorage had indeed become a living tomb, and we the walking dead who lived there. I had waking dreams of the open sea, a fresh breeze blowing through my porthole, and fresh cool water to drink, and beer for the hottest time of the day, and then warm coffee for the cold of the night. All we had to do was abandon the rest of the ore and steam north a day or two to Bombay, where all we needed would be at our fingertips. Where the authorities would arrest Harding and his goons and liberate us, and the Corporation would fly in another captain who would take us home and end our stay in hell.
I didn’t know how the decision had been made, but it had. Bombay - I would set a course for Bombay and our salvation.
I nodded, and Sullivan waited to see if I would change my mind. But he knew I wouldn’t, and he braved the blistering sun to spread the word that the end was in sight, if we stuck together.
7
A third of our remaining crew would have nothing to do with it, claiming it would only make things worse. They retreated to the waterproof compartments belowdecks, fully willing to broil inside their bodies until the deed was done, successful or not, so they might be spared by Harding, whom they considered the winner even before our attempt.
The rest crowded into the companionway and massed, waiting for one of us to step forward and bang on the captain’s door. I knew that would be me, Corelli, the second officer. I waited for courage to flow into my veins and move my limbs, but that was when the door opened and Harding stepped out with the Mauser in his fist and Gunther with his Schmeisser behind us, and Idalgo with his lady’s gun at his master’s elbow, and I made my speech with conviction and fear of imminent death.
The wave of odors which escaped the captain’s quarters and washed over us in that close companionway will remain etched in my olfactory memory until my last moment - a stench of death, decay, spices, sweat and urine, and something darker, mustier, and somehow more repellent than all the others put together.
“Sir, we have been in this port forty-nine days. The loading will take at least three more weeks to finish at this pace. We are down to a cup of water per man per day. The local water is contaminated, or so we are told. Our alcohol rations are running low, as is our food supply. The men have been warned to avoid leaving the ship due to the cholera epidemic. We have dead men in the cold room, and we now number nearly a dozen cases of dysentery in the infirmary. I speak only facts, sir, and I must insist that you cut short our stay and allow us to head for a friendly port where we can recover from the disaster that has been this voyage since we first set out. With all due respect, sir, we implore your humanity.”
The lamps twitched as if tugged on a single chain pull.
The pressure in my head built until the pain seemed almost too much to bear. I looked at Sullivan, and at Bentz, and their grimacing faces confirmed what I felt. A keening wail seemed to slice through our eardrums and I saw that blood was indeed leaking from the ears of some of the men. I saw that we were no longer a group of well-intentioned seekers of justice, but a mob of ragged scarecrows in the grasp of something larger - something more complex than anything we had ever imagined in our puny lives.
And through it all, Captain Harding’s eyes, surveying the landscape of my soul.
Through the open cabin door I glimpsed the long crate, open now and propped onto the captain’s desk positioned so the body within stared at me through mummified eye-sockets that were screwed shut but somehow still managed to bore into my eyes with an intensity that nearly loosened my bowels where I stood. It was Saint Francis Xavier himself, of that I have no doubt any more, though at the time I was hesitant to admit to myself what I had seen. Harding had somehow procured the sainted remains for his own uses, of which we would never have the opportunity to learn. I scarcely had the chance to register the sight, or turn toward Bentz and Sullivan and the others, or call out, or shout a warning, or indeed even cower in the face of the fear I felt. I scarcely had the chance because just then the connection was broken as Idalgo, the spineless Spaniard henchman stepped slightly aside, coming between me and the saint’s horrible gaze, and the words Captain Harding spoke were slow and deliberate, delivered in some sort of chant which lulled my mind and dulled my senses - I am more convinced of this every day now - and spoke to my soul and to the souls of the others and drew from us a promise, or a vow, or some sort of assent, and made us all complicit in the actions that he had taken and those he was about to take.
And then Harding’s other hand, the one he’d hidden behind his back, flashed out and in his grip was a strangely rippled blade (a kris I have since learned), its long bejewelled hilt and crossguard reflecting the blinking, strobing companionway lights even after its point had found and penetrated the belly of Idalgo, whose surprised look before the pain came proved that he’d been unaware of this part of the plan, yes, and then he dropped the empty revolver. Only then did I realize that I had seen subconsciously the empty cylinder chambers - that Idalgo had always been a part of the plan, just not the part he thought.
The Spaniard dropped the revolver into the gore pooling at his feet and looked up at his master, who still held the knife deeply embedded in his organs. Harding then jerked the blade upward, sawing into Idalgo’s living torso and making him twitch like a life-size marionette until he’d been split open from belly to sternum like the corpse he already was, even if his brain had not yet registered the fact.
We - foiled mutineers - stood in the strobing lights, the smell of blood and feces mingling with the other, more pervasive stench from the captain’s cabin, and suddenly our purpose seemed as dim as a light far away down a railway tunnel. We had no purpose except to obey our captain. When he and Gunth
er passed around the flagon filled with Idalgo’s hot, coppery blood and watched as we partook, Bentz and Sullivan and I and the others, bodies shivering as if suffering from the ague, we were then united under the weight of our complicity - the sacrifice of one for the lives of many, perhaps.
I accept now that I will never know, only suspect.
The memory is a funny thing, for it took nearly forty years for some of these images to resolve into a whole I could almost understand, and by then it was too late.
It is too late.
You see, after the hasty inquest established that seven crewmen had died of disease due to the primitive conditions of our port of call and not negligence of the officers, I was able to track Voss Harding eventually - to a new name and face, and the CEO’s office of a three-letter company you would surely recognize, where he ruled with a legendary iron fist and made billions. At least until last month, when he suddenly disappeared.
I remained a long-distance friend of Sullivan and Bentz, my compatriots in our failed mutiny, who helped me finally take the S.S. Caritas back home laden with silver and other, more esoteric treasure. Their memory, too, was flawed, but we agreed that something had happened to us at the hands of Captain Voss Harding. Occasionally we even tried to talk about it. At least until a month ago, when Bentz disappeared. And two weeks ago, when Sullivan went missing.
I have since seen photographs of the mummy of Saint Francis Xavier, and its features strangely resemble those of the treacherous Idalgo.
Perhaps payment is now due for whatever he - we - purchased that day, long ago, in the split harbor of Panaji, Goa.
I fear the collector is on his way.
Dedicated to my father, who witnessed
some of these events.
* * *
STARBIRD
Published in THE MIDNIGHTERS CLUB; Honorable Mention in
THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY & HORROR (15th edition)
“I remember like it was yest’day the day I hooked up with Graken,” I say to the hick sittin’ next to me at the scraped-up excuse for a bar they call the Come-On Inn, “and I’d be sure glad to tell you about it if you’d set there a spell and mebbe spot me a shot or three of whatever you’re drinkin’.”
The fella had been there, in the front row. I recollected his old snap-brim hat cocked low over his eyes, like he didn’t wanna be seen. He was still wearing the hat, but had pushed it back a ways over his skull so’s you could see a short patch of limp blond hair hanging over his
forehead. And you could see his eyes lookin’ at me like they was measuring me for a casket - all thin and slitty. Then he nodded, sudden-like, and waved the barkeep over, who’d been givin’ me the eye hisself ever since I come in.
They all respected me in the pit, all right, but here - here I was trash.
“I’ll have another, and one like it for this gentleman,” he says to the ex-boxer with the apron. The boxer smirks like he’s not so sure about the gentleman part, as it applies to me, but nods and pours two, takin’ some cash from the hick’s pile.
“Thank you kindly,” I says, mindin’ my manners. It ain’t often I get a mark so quickly on the first try, so I work ‘im as careful as I can. The shot’s good goin’ down, but I gulp half and save the rest for sippin’. “Din’t I see you at the pit day ‘fore yest’day?”
I figure, go for the throat.
He turns away for a second, like’s he’s all embarrassed by what I’m sayin’, ‘cept what I’m sayin’ is the truth - he was there, and he knows it. So were a hundred other dinks, but I ain’t got time to dick around with this game. I got pressures and I got commitments.
I got Graken to feed, and I need a new stake. The prize we took two days ago is gone-Daddy-gone, and there’s a derby on just three hours away, if only some mark would put up the five hundred bucks entry. Why do I think this dude’s the one? Just call it a gut-feeling - he’s wearin’ a crap-hat, but his shoes scream dollar bills and the suit’s gotta be silk. He signals apron-boy for a couple more and I note that includin’ me in this round means I got a hook into him. He’s interested, sure as shit. I feel relief floodin’ inside my gut. Graken’s gonna eat, and I’m gonna have some more time to think on what problems I got.
Sometimes, that’s just the best a man can line up.
“Name’s Nate Culpepper,” I says while the shots’re bein’ poured. I stick out my hand.
The hick takes my hand and crushes it. “Philby. Gerald Philby.”
“Well, Jerry, it’s nice meetin’ after sharin’ the joys and excitement of the pit.” I give ‘im the wet noodle - you never know when it’s gonna come in handy to be underestimated.
“Not so loud, okay?” Philby looks around again and downs his shot. His hand just might be shakin’. What does this guy think - that I’m a cop, settin’ up a sting?
“Nothin’ to worry about here, Jer,” I says. “Everybody here’s been to the pit at least once. Some - well, they can’t take the blood, know what I mean? Others though, others are meaner’n shit and willin’ to spend money to make money.”
I look at him through my own slits.
“Which kind are you?”
“Look, I bought you a drink,” he says. “Glad to meet you. But I’d really rather be alone.”
“You saw my bird there in the pit,” I whisper so’s not to let the dinks around us in on my pitch. “You know it’s a winner. I’ve lost track o’the number of matches he’s won. I’m jus’ lookin’ for somebody to partner up with me for this derby later on, and maybe for the World Series goin’ on next week in this little place jus’ outside Kansas City.”
Some kind of a weird look flits over his eyes. Like he’s puzzled, wonderin’ why him, and then the look turns to good ole greed and the corners of his mouth crinkle up a bit, like maybe we ain’t jus’ whistlin’ Dixie here after all.
“How much do you need?” His voice is quiet and controlled, but I’ve seen enough like ‘im to feel the blood rushin’ through his veins.
“Five bills,” I says. “I’m a gah-ran-teed winner, and the derby pays twenty-five grand for first prize. Even second’s a good win — fifty bills.”
“Winnings split how?”
“Th’ middle, after upkeep. I put up the bird, so if we lose your stash I lose my livin’.”
“You’ve got other birds,” he says, wavin’ for another drink.
I wait for the pourin’ to be done, then drink with my new partner. It’s always this easy.
“Used to. Only got Graken now,” I says softly. “Only need the one. You wanna meet ‘im?”
He nods, and we’re outta there, me feelin’ apron-boy’s eyes on my back.
*
“You were going to tell me about how -”
“Me and Graken got together, yeah.” I guided him to my heap out in the lot, an old Volvo wagon with a cage set-up in the back and jus’ enough room for my suitcase and a coupla things. The dented trailer with big U-Haul letters fadin’ on the side was hanging on in the shadows. “Still
gonna, Jerry. Still gonna. You still gonna stake me for this next derby?”
He bobbed his head but kept his mouth shut.
I could see ‘im starin’ into the darkness in the back of the car, strainin’ to make out the bird that would be his ticket out. Outta what, how the fuck did I know? But marks like him, they’re always lookin’ for a way outta somethin’, and they always need guys like me. And my Graken.
The bird’s watchin’ somethin’ on the little color tv I got plugged into the lighter. He likes doin’ that - sittin’ in front of it like a kid, beak almost touchin’ the screen.
“Pull back a little,” I says. But I’m too late.
Just as Jerry’s cranin’ his neck to peek into the car, Graken shoots up to the window in that zoom-bang way he’s got - like he’s not even there at all, and suddenly the air starts to kinda shimmer and then he’s sittin’ right at the glass starin’ at ya and kinda tremblin’ and twitchin’. And you’re rubbin’ your eyes an
d wonderin’ how much you had to drink, cause no way could he just appear like that.
‘Cept he can, and he does. And that’s why he’s a winner.
Jerry’s still shakin’ from the shock - like he almost jumped outta his skin and dropped his heart out his ass - when I go on tellin’ him the story I was gonna start while in the bar. He was gonna listen real good, Jerry was. I could tell. And Graken was gonna watch us the whole time.
I wait for him to start breathin’ regular again.
“Use to be I had a whole stable of birds,” I say. He’s starin’ at me, but I ignore him. “One day I just get done feedin’ ‘em their vitamins and I’m about to do some trainin’ with spurs, and they start squawkin’ like their tail feathers’re on fire. I look up and here’s this scrawny thing walkin’ into my compound. It’s red and gold and kinda shimmery, almost like it’s made out of metal. I ain’t never seen one of this breed before, but that don’t mean much - it’s got feathers and a crest and it squawks at me like one of my birds. I figure it’s either an offspring I ain’t seen that got outta the compound or else it belongs to a neighbor who’s been cockin’ longer than I been.”
By now Jerry and Graken are starin’ at each other, and I feel mighty glad there’s thick glass between the two. You can never figure what Graken’ll do, and we need Jerry right now, for tonight’s derby, but maybe Graken don’t sense that yet. It’s so late by now that I’m crossin’ my fingers on the stake Jerry’s givin’ us. It’s too damn late to find another mark now.
Shadowplays Page 14
