“How many you expect?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“How long does the cruise last, Captain?” Miss Tinkham said.
“Just goin’ out for the day.” The captain took the beer Mrs. Rasmussen handed him. “Batch o’ sightseers, wantin’ to say they been on a yacht. Sail ’em over towards San Clemente an’ back. Got fifteen from some motorcycle club. I get ten dollars a head from ’em. That don’t include no drinks but beer, you know.”
“Too good for ’em,” Mrs. Feeley snorted.
“Sandwiches?” Mrs. Rasmussen wrinkled her nose.
“Well, I hate it, but with a herd like that…”
“If you had a chowder, now…an’ them good heavy paper cups with handles,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Then give ’em a little paper bag apiece with a hunk o’ fried chicken an’ a dab o’ potato salad in it.”
“What’s the good o’ crucifyin’ me, woman? I’ll have to stay alongside the moorin’ till I go around on my own spud peelin’s before I’ll be able to raise enough money to bail out them blaggards.”
“No need to do that, Captain,” Mrs. Feeley put her hand on his shoulder, “you got all the crew you need right here. I’ll be your swabbie and Mrs. Rasmussen’ll cook. Miss Tinkham can add class an’ elegance.”
“I’ll be the cruise director and point out places of interest…er…Point Loma, for instance.”
Captain Dowdy looked around wildly for the door but Mrs. Rasmussen stood in front of it with the bread knife in her hand.
“We’ve done said we’d go,” she said.
“That’s damn decent of you.” The captain was sweating gumdrops. “Damn good. But, ma’am, if you’ll excuse me sayin’ so, you don’t none of you know port from starboard.”
“Don’t form any hasty conclusions, Captain,” Miss Tinkham said. “We can wear a red sock on one foot and a green sock on the other and then we can tell port from starboard!”
“Who’ll help me with the sheets?” the captain bellowed.
“What are you runnin’?” Mrs. Feeley said. “They don’t need no sheets just goin’ out for the day!”
“A wet sheet and a flowing sea,” Miss Tinkham began to sing blithely.
“Dammit to hell! Sheets! Ropes! What you haul the boom with!”
“Your trouble is ended, Captain,” Miss Tinkham said. “Your crew is ready, willing and able!”
“They’ll be hell to pay an’ no pitch hot,” the captain groaned. “I’d best go down an’ punch a policeman in the snot-locker an’ ask him to lock me up, too!”
“Now do relax, Captain! You haven’t a care in the world.”
“You’ll not regret it,” Mrs. Rasmussen soothed him. “Like to get this settled ’fore I put my soufflé in the oven.”
“Don’t have much choice, do I?” he said. The ladies shook their heads.
“I was thinking of a device to carve over the door when we rebuild the Ark, and you have just given me an inspiration. I can see it now in Gothic lettering: ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.’ Dante’s Inferno.”
“I can’t keep track o’ every all-night dog-wagon in town,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Where is this Danny’s Inferno?”
“It’s a rather overcrowded rotisserie, Mrs. Feeley. Nothing worth wasting your time on.”
“We made up his mind for him.” Mrs. Rasmussen spoke gently. “Times when you gotta think for people.” She turned to the bemused skipper. “We won’t affront you, insult the customers, nor nothin’. Honest.”
The captain rubbed his head wildly with both hands:
“Just remember one thing: you asked for it!”
“What time we gonna start?” Mrs. Feeley got up and opened a drawer under the trailer bunk. “What went with my old dungarees?” She sat down on the floor with a thud. “They was burned in the Ark, wasn’t they? How long is this here gonna keep on? Guess the rest of our life we’ll be reachin’ for somethin’ that ain’t there. Mrs. Rasmussen an’ her pots today…me an’ my pants tonight!”
“Speaking of things that aren’t there,” Miss Tinkham waved her empty beer glass, “I suppose I should get hold of a pair of slacks.”
“Where we gonna get the stuff for the chowder?” Mrs. Rasmussen said, “an’ the chicken? Gotta get that lunch started.”
“I’m gettin’ underway at nine. All that ain’t aboard gets left.” Captain Dowdy was all business. “Long as you’ve a mind to go an’ nothin’ can stop you, we’ll get the stuff after we eat. Market bound to be open someplace.”
“We’ll be up half the night, so we might’s well take on a little shock absorber.” Mrs. Feeley thumped their guest stoutly on the back. “You ain’t got a thing to bother you now.”
“Nothin’ but this.” The captain spoke bitterly and pulled out a pinkish envelope with gilt deckle edge. Mrs. Rasmussen scented trouble.
“Some dame?”
“Chartreuse.” He nodded, staring at the sheet covered with infantile writing in purple ink.
“Excuse me, but that’s mauve,” Miss Tinkham said.
“Chartreuse Mulligan.”
“What is it?” Mrs. Feeley said. “Do you eat it, salute it, or paint it?”
“It’s no laughin’ matter when it’s your wife,” the captain said.
“She goes by Mulligan. She didn’t think Chartreuse Dowdy sounded good, specially since she started the Health-Through-Light Clinic; she wanted me to call her Toozie, but I be goddammed if I would.”
“Toozie, the Boozie, the Fl…” Miss Tinkham stopped short at a glance from Mrs. Rasmussen.
“She was on the booze, but she ain’t no more. She’s death on Mental Health now.”
“How’d she get the harpoon into you in the first place?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
The captain gave her a level look. “Does anybody ever know?”
“Best start in on the oysters, Captain,” she said. “Draw up.”
“All this Captain stuff! Might put a feller off his feed, so much title all the time! Couldn’t you just call me Tooner Schooner?”
The ladies stopped eating.
“How come?” Mrs. Feeley said.
“I had a tuna-fishin’ boat before the war an’ was doin’ good…till I got married. All my close friends called me Tooner Schooner. Chartreuse thinks it’s vulgar.”
“Okay, Tooner,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“We must break up this Mutual Admiration Society,” Miss Tinkham said, “before Madame Mulligan is down on us with a suit for alienation of affections.”
“She don’t give a damn about affection; just keep the boat business boomin’.” The captain had gone through his oysters in jigtime.
“She’s so crazy about the boat, why don’t she help you?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Her? All she wants is money orders.” The captain’s eyes ran out like a sand crab’s. “She was all for boats till she got me hitched. Minute we was married, it was ‘goodbye, boats,’ ’cept when she comes around for her share of the money.”
“Why do you give it to her?”
“I’m obliged to. Don’t want no lawsuits. Give the boat a bad name.”
“Where’s she live?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Got a place in Arizona. Bought land up near a canyon. That’s where she has her trailer and the Clinic.”
“Surely you’re not serious?” Miss Tinkham saw that her lorgnette was so thoroughly bespattered with horseradish as to be useless. She dropped it back on her chest.
“Serious as all hell; she packs ’em in. Apes from all over. She listens to their troubles and makes ’em drink fruit juice and then tells them to go ahead and do whatever it was they wanted to do. They pay big money.”
“Gawd, man…”
“It seems like the Police Department of that town is a real nice man and a good friend of hers.”
Miss Tinkham removed the oyster plates.
“It is surprising how few people realize that greed is one of the seven deadly sins. If she is prosperous, I fail to see why she should demand mo
ney from you.”
“You separated?” Mrs. Feeley said.
He shook his head.
“She wasn’t so bad when I married her, just dumb and lazy. Always waiting to be discovered. Maybe it was a movie scout that was goin’ to find her; maybe some big record company would hear her sing and pick her up; maybe she’d write a best seller. They wasn’t no tellin’ what she might do. She took the Charm Course and the Writin’ Course and the Tap Dancin’ by Mail Course…ayah, I forgot the Interior Decoratin’ Course and the Fashion Designer Course.”
“An’ couldn’t hem a dishtowel.” Mrs. Rasmussen set down the soufflé with care and shuffled out the hot plates.
“Sometimes she’d change the color of her hair four or five times in a month…spend two or three days fixin’ it. She never had less than forty jars of make-up in the bathroom.”
“An’ you got canned soup,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“I sure as hell never got nothin’ like this.” Captain Dowdy laughed. “You’d scarcely credit it, but for Thanksgivin’ dinner, last time I et with her, she opened up a can of sardines.”
“Why do you put up with her?” Miss Tinkham was aghast.
“Guess I’m bone-lazy. I figure everybody’s entitled to one mistake. She’s never let me get anythin’ on her that I could prove, but I know she was on the town during the war when I was in the Navy. We got in an argument once and she told me I’d never catch her because there was a second-class radioman that owned a Cadillac convertible and a motel, and how did I think he got it?”
“How?” The chorus was perfect.
“Some few Navy wives and a lot of other ladies interested in the exact time of arrival of the ships paid him a nice take each week to keep them posted.”
“But you know she’s no good,” Mrs. Feeley said.
“She’s useful to me in one way.” He held out his plate for more soufflé. “Long as I’m draggin’ that anchor, she can keep me from ever gettin’ into any trouble like that again.”
“But you’d ought to cut clean,” Mrs. Feeley said.
“I guess I should,” the captain agreed, “but I’m out so much an’ there’s red tape and things to be straightened out between us. Guess I’d get round to it fast enough if I found somebody…”
“Common property?” Miss Tinkham said.
“Well…in a manner of speakin’. Chartreuse goes on the principle of ‘What’s yours is mine. What’s mine’s my own.’ She could make it tough for me, all right.”
Mrs. Feeley started to speak but shut up when she saw Miss Tinkham’s signal.
“How did we ever get onto such personal territory. Captain! Obviously, you have your own good reasons for living as you do. Would you let me see your hand?” Elisha Dowdy stuck out one palm bashfully. “You are anything but an ill-starred person,” she said. “You have one great drawback: the inability to pronounce two letters, N and O. There is a long, healthy life ahead of you, with considerable prosperity. Real love is in store for you.”
“You believe in that gunk?” The captain grinned.
“Not for nothing are the stars,” Miss Tinkham said.
“Navigate boats by ’em,” he agreed.
“Love is coming to you…sooner than you think. It is in the person of a dark woman, someone who has traveled many miles from her native land. She is lost, but you will find her. There is sudden and unexpected prosperity coming to you, over water. There is also danger from the same source. It appears to be a legal complication of some kind. There is some organization that you are avoiding. You are keeping out of their way on purpose. Have you been bringing in rum, Captain?” Miss Tinkham smiled.
“No’m. But you’re gettin’ warm! Keep on.”
“After the sudden success, there is a slump which will be hard to explain. Things will look very black for a while, but you must never despair, for you have a good Karma. There is a point coming in your life when everything will be lost…material possessions, everything. Even then, you must not lose hope, because you have coming to you the one thing without which nothing in the world has any meaning or value: true love. Never give up the ship, because every line in your hand ends in a star. No matter which way you turn, no matter how black things look for you…it is written: you are born to have your heart’s desire.”
“An’ she could a told you all that there about the boat an’ everythin’ if you’d a walked in here off the street without her ever havin’ seen you before, not knowing if you was a bus driver or soda jerk,” Mrs. Feeley said proudly.
“Enough to set you thinkin’. You could cash in on that,” the captain said.
Miss Tinkham shook her head and smiled. “It’s a gift, not a grift.”
“I thank you,” Captain Dowdy said. “Funny about that stuff…kinda like somebody of another religion prayin’ for you: can’t do no harm an’ might possibly do some good.”
At the all-night market, Mrs. Rasmussen bustled about making her selections, with the captain carrying the bundles respectfully.
“Don’t spare the bosses,” he said. “Kinda fun, this takin’ on stores, ent it?”
“Shopping is delightful,” Miss Tinkham agreed. “With Mrs. Rasmussen it’s a magnificent adventure, the very stuff of life.”
When the cab drew up at the dock, the ladies helped him unload. He stepped aboard and unlocked the hatch for them.
“I’ll tend the stuff. Go below.”
“We’re helpin’,” Mrs. Rasmussen said stubbornly.
Miss Tinkham wrestled with a beer carton and murmured to Mrs. Feeley, “I think it is Elijah who tells us that the widow’s cruse is not to be dry.”
“I’m makin’ damn sure this cruise ain’t,” Mrs. Feeley laughed and took a beer carton under each arm.
Chapter 3
NEXT MORNING, SATURDAY, Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen stepped out of the trailer at the parking lot clad in borrowed dungarees and sweat shirts. Miss Tinkham wore black velvet pirate pants and a shocking pink jersey cardigan trimmed lavishly with beads. Darleen had shot the works, including an uplift bra that made Miss Tinkham’s breasts stand out like two empty spools.
“Captain won’t know his old pants, bulging at the seams like this, will he?” Mrs. Feeley said to Mrs. Rasmussen.
“Not hardly. But weren’t it lucky that Darleen’s britches fit Miss Tinkham?”
“They are truly exotic,” Miss Tinkham beamed, “and appropriate.” Miss Tinkham’s feet were the final tribute to high fashion. She wore Roman sandals of patent leather with a thong of tiger skin between her big toes. In honor of the occasion she had encrusted her toenails thickly with dark red polish. “I think we could have stayed up half the night talking to the captain. He is simply fascinating.”
“Free with the beer, too,” Mrs. Feeley said.
“He ain’t bad.” Mrs. Rasmussen’s face was very pink.
“Don’t gush,” Miss Tinkham laughed.
Captain Dowdy was counting the life preservers in a pile on the deck. He gleamed as though scoured with yellow soap. His khaki pants and shirt were creased to a knife edge and his cap was at a salty rake.
“Here we are,” Mrs. Feeley shouted, “clean and sober.”
The captain helped them aboard and turned to Mrs. Rasmussen.
“Made you a fire in the Shipmate. Bear a hand with these Mae Wests.” He handed the life jackets to Miss Tinkham.
Before Mrs. Feeley could figure out how it happened, she had a cellulose sponge in one hand and a bucket of soapsuds in the other.
“Wipe down the paintwork in the forward head.”
Mrs. Feeley reared back a little as though to unload a few well-chosen remarks.
“Aye aye, sir.” She saluted smartly.
“Here.” The captain handed her a sailor’s white hat.
Mrs. Rasmussen’s head appeared in the hatch.
“Lookit.” She wore a chef’s white linen hat jammed securely over her hair.
“Try this on for size.” Captain Dowdy gave Miss Tinkham a ya
chting cap with an elaborate emblem on it.
“Really, Captain,” Miss Tinkham beamed, “there is no end to your thoughtfulness.” She put the cap on at a jaunty angle. “Now, how can I be most useful?”
“’Sposed to be fifteen of ’em comin’ aboard from some motorcycle club. You check ’em off and collect the money from the man in cha’ge of the chatter.”
“Where’s the head?” Mrs. Feeley said.
“Same place ’twas last night. You was in it,” the captain said. “Right behind the vanished door.”
“The door’s still there.” Mrs. Feeley felt frisky.
Mrs. Rasmussen was opening cans of kernel corn for her chowder. She operated the crank handle of the can opener blissfully.
“Ain’t this a bewt?”
Mrs. Feeley beckoned to her.
“What’s this say? The print’s too fine for me…” She pointed to a small typewritten notice framed on the inside of the door of the head. Mrs. Rasmussen read it and smiled:
“‘DO NOT PUT ANYTHING IN THIS HEAD THAT YOU DID NOT SWALLOW FIRST!’ Reckon that about covers it,” she said and went back to the galley. Coming down the hatch she saw the biggest pair of sneakers she had ever seen over hideously shrieking Argyle socks.
“Hi, Toots.” A great, lumbering young man advanced in all friendliness.
“What do you want?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Nothin’.”
“Well, you come to the right place for it.” She went back to the chowder.
“Ooh,” he said, “snowing down here.”
Mrs. Feeley started up the ladder, glowering.
“They better keep outa my head.”
“Big ock,” Mrs. Rasmussen agreed. “An’ he’s only the first one.” She lowered her voice. “Cap’n makes his livin’ the hard way.”
Miss Tinkham stood on deck like Lot’s wife. “Do, for heaven’s sake, take a look, dear Captain.”
“I wish I hadn’t given up swearin’ when the chatter’s aboard,” he groaned. “Pipe that!” A squatty man with a beret came aboard lugging a bass fiddle. “You’ll have to tow that along with the dinghy.”
Tooner Schooner Page 2
