A Flag for Sunrise

by Robert Stone

  “Me, too,” said Pablo.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Callahan, “the more for me.”

  Pablo felt her eyes on him. He looked through the smoke into their blue watchfulness.

  Tino stood up suddenly.

  “Goin’ forward,” he announced. “Got to watch de bottom out here.”

  “What about your chow?” Negus called after him, but he was gone.

  Mrs. Callahan leaned back in her chair and finished the joint. Callahan was pouring himself another drink, Negus moodily finishing the one in his hand. The woman worked her joint down to a ring of resin, balancing it on her lip with a hemostat. When it was finished, she put the hemostat away.

  “Want to help me out, Pablo?”

  “Sure,” Pablo said.

  From the galley, they could see Tino sitting in one of the cockpit chairs, his head and shoulders faintly green in the unnatural light of the Fathometer. A soft merengue was coming in over the UHF; Pablo watched Mrs. Callahan’s lower body, encased in the tightest of faded denim jeans, sway mellifluously to its beat. She was gathering metal plates from an overhead dish rack. For the first time he noticed a printed sign posted over the stove that read you BETTER BELIZE IT. When she turned to him he was laughing at the sign.

  “What’s funny, pardner?” She smiled and brushed the damp hair from around her eyes. He could not tell how old she was—forty, more or less. Her face was lean, creased around the eyes, sun-cured. When she set the dishes down on the counter beside the stove, he felt her breast brush his bare arm, the nipple distinct and distended under the soft cotton of her sweat shirt.

  “Just feelin’ good,” Pablo said.

  “Feelin’ good is easy,” Mrs. Callahan said. She said it with such gravity that he felt compelled to reflection.

  “No,” he said after a moment. “Not so easy.”

  They watched each other, locked in the drug; she was looking at him with wary amusement, still easing to the merengue.

  “Funny kind of boat this is,” Pablo said.

  “Yes,” Deedee Callahan assured him. “This is your basic funny boat. Now do something for me, Pablo. Give the boys their vittles.”

  She took the steak from the pan and placed a strip on each of the five dishes. On each dish she spooned out some of the greens from the stewpot, then handed two of the plates to Tabor. She winked at him and motioned with her head toward the dining compartment.

  Pablo did not chafe under his servitude. He served Negus and Mr. Callahan graciously, setting the steaming plates before them.

  I goddamn well got her, he was thinking. Any old damn time.

  When he went back into the galley she gave him a plate for Tino in the cockpit. He brought it forward and placed it on the chart table; Tino gave him a brief bad eye in return. Pablo smiled. The man must know, he thought, what was passing between himself and Mrs. Callahan.

  There was a plate for him steaming in the galley; he brought it down to the table and seated himself across from Negus and Callahan. Mrs. Callahan joined them presently, carrying her own plate and some salsa, salt and pepper on a tray. The Cloud took the gentle seas with a slow fore-and-aft pitch.

  “Beats shrimping,” Pablo said, breaking the silence that had settled over the dinner table. He assaulted his tenderized steak with concentration.

  “We’ll do some shrimping by and by,” Mr. Callahan told him. “But as you have undoubtedly surmised—shrimping is not how we make our way through life.”

  “Yeah,” Pablo said. “I surmised that.”

  “What else you surmised?” Negus asked him.

  “You told me not to ask questions, cap,” Pablo said, “so I didn’t ask you any.” He looked around the table. “I’m easy to get along with.”

  “Fred,” Mr. Callahan said to Negus, “you’re the best seaman in the world but you’re a balls of a politician.” He turned his soft look on Pablo. “What we’re wondering, fella—you being lately in the Coast Guard and all that—is what you make of us. We’re interested in your educated guess.”

  “O.K.,” Pablo said. “You’re running something. I would have said dope but I don’t think so now. If you were going up to the States from a Dutch place like St. Joost I’d say diamonds. But you say you’re not messing with the States.” He cut himself another piece of steak. “Computer parts maybe. Calculators, like that. Only this boat’s not big enough for a high-scoring run with that kind of weight. And the whole deal feels sort of heavy-duty. Between one thing and another—guns. That’s a good old-time trade.”

  “Yes, it is,” Callahan said.

  “If we’re going to Cuba,” Pablo said, “we got our work cut out for us.”

  “We’re not going to Cuba.”

  “Well, good. If it’s not there it could be any one of ten or a dozen places. There’s lots of petty-ass politics down here, right? I don’t even follow it.”

  “All right,” Callahan said. “Let me give you the word on a need-to-know basis as it were. You don’t need to know where we’re going. In a day or two we’ll be in Nieuw Utrecht on St. Joost taking on ice and groceries. After dark we’re loading cargo on the other side of the island. What we want from you is a little help with the groceries and what we especially want is you standing by while we take on the cargo. Also when we deliver it, because that’s the moment of truth, hombre. You’ll get to do some shrimping tomorrow night too, in case you’re interested.”

  “I wish someone would tell me what I stood to get paid,” Pablo said.

  “When we figure our costs,” Negus said, “we’ll tell you.”

  “It’s a reasonable question,” Callahan said equitably. “You can figure on at least five hundred a day for the next few days. It’ll beat your Coast Guard pay.”

  “I guess so,” Pablo said.

  “Think that’ll keep you happy?” Negus said. “Because we have to keep you happy. We insist on it.”

  “I think everybody’s gonna do all right,” Pablo said.

  Everyone in the cabin laughed; Pablo found it disconcerting.

  When dinner was over, Negus and Mr. Callahan took their coffee to a small compartment aft of the central cabin and closed the teak door behind them. Pablo found himself on mess duty with the lady once again. The radio in the cockpit was tuned to one of the missionary stations that broadcast Jesus messages—the Baptist missionaries had the most powerful transmitters in the islands.

  “Whereunto shall I liken the Kingdom of God?” a youthful Nebraskan voice inquired over the UHF, “it is like leaven …” Tino was making notations on his Loran chart.

  She had gone back to smoking grass. It was the strongest grass Pablo had ever drawn of and she seemed to take joint after joint of it. After two or three tokes, the enveloping papers grew moist and tarry with deep green resin. Pablo declined. When the washing up was finished they went back to the cleared table.

  “What brought you down here, Pablo?”

  “Just wandering around,” Pablo said. He was thinking that they were all the same.

  “You’re kind of a throwback, aren’t you? In the jet age?”

  “I been on plenty of jets,” Pablo told her.

  “Didn’t you like the Coast Guard?”

  “I liked it all right until they started turning me around.”

  “I thought that was what they were all about.”

  “Some guys will sit still for anything,” Pablo explained. “They got no self-respect. Any kind of militaristic trash, they don’t object to it.”

  Pablo had picked up the anti-militaristic angle working at the Coast Guard district headquarters in Boston and incorporated it into his line. It had worked fairly well with the girls around there, and Mrs. Callahan, although not so young and tenderhearted, seemed to be a little like them.

  “So you got radicalized, is that it?”

  Pablo felt as though he had been softly counterpunched. He rolled with it.

  “I had this CPO on my case who was like a Fascist-type guy. He kept at it, so I cold-cocked hi
m. Broke his jaw. I was looking at time, see what I mean? So I skipped.”

  “Is that a literal story, Pablo,” Mrs. Callahan asked sympathetically, “or is it kind of symbolic?”

  “What?” Pablo asked. He did not necessarily insist that women believe everything that they were told, but he was not used to their calling him a liar.

  She put her joint down and looked sincerely thoughtful.

  “The thing is,” she said, “when you hear the same kind of story from a lot of different people you wonder about the little details. Because no two things ever happen the same way, do they, Pablo?”

  “I guess not,” he said.

  “Of course, they don’t. So you tell me that story and right away I want to know—because I’m a curious sort—what’s special about Pablo Tabor. As opposed to all the other guys who broke the CPO’s jaw and so forth.”

  Smart, he thought. But smart or not they were all the same.

  “A jaw got broke,” Pablo told her, “and it wasn’t mine. Somebody tried to fuck with me. So I’m over the hill and on this boat and that’s my story.”

  “And they call you Pablo. Is that a nickname or what?”

  “It’s my name,” he told her.

  “But it’s Spanish.”

  “My mother was Indian,” Pablo said. It was true to an extent, but to what extent was a question lost in centuries.

  “I knew it,” Mrs. Callahan said quietly.

  That’s what she goes for, Pablo thought. He had run across it before. He was aware that she had eased her chair against his and he felt her body again, her long leg in smooth clean denim.

  “This funny boat where you live?” he asked her.

  “So it would seem,” she said. “It just goes on and on.”

  “Maybe you don’t like it too much.”

  “It has its moments.”

  When he put his hand against her soft sheathed thigh, she was suddenly somber.

  “Goodness,” she said.

  He slid his hand down to her knee and back up, fingering an inner seam and the flesh it lined. Then he closed his fist and rested the back of his hand on the film of denim. It was a physical stalemate. With Tino in the cockpit, Callahan and Negus on the other side of a door, there was nothing more he dared do.

  “You take your pleasures where you find them, do you, Pablo?”

  “My kind of life you do.”

  “Mine too,” she said.

  She turned her head to look at him and he saw that under the weathered skin, the various set wrinkles and the small boozy sacs below her eyes—there was something like a kid about her.

  “Hey,” he said after a moment, “we’re gonna get in trouble.” He was embarrassed at the standoff and his palms were beginning to sweat.

  The woman laughed silently. “Trouble?”

  “Ain’t we?”

  “What’s a little more trouble,” she asked, “on this funny boat?”

  The small teak door to the inner compartment opened and Freddy Negus put his head out. In the moment, Pablo decided, Negus had seen all there was to see.

  “Jack would like you with us for a while, Deedee. If you don’t mind.”

  She rose slowly from under Pablo’s hand, her own hand touched his shoulder. “Right you are.”

  Negus was watching Pablo as he held the compartment door for Mrs. Callahan.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep, son?”

  “Thought you might want me to take the wheel from Tino.”

  “Tino’s all right. If he wants a few zees we can go on automatic for three or four hours.”

  “Well, O.K, then.” He stood up and stretched. “Guess I’ll go back aft then.”

  Negus nodded and they exchanged good-nights.

  Ambling back to the lazaret, Orion ablaze over the starboard quarter and the sea rolling easy under the boards, Pablo paused to lean over the rail. He was flushed and horny with his conquest of the soft rich lady. As he lounged, scheming in the starry darkness, he became aware of voices sounding from somewhere in the innards of the boat. He was standing over the forward ice hold. The voices were those of Negus and Mr. Callahan.

  Pablo took a look around and lowered himself into the halfcovered hold; its interior still smelled of shrimp and of another substance, vaguely familiar but beyond his recall. There was a half inch of water on the flooring.

  Moving to the bulkhead closest to the compartment in which he had taken dinner, he pressed his ear against the damp boards. It was almost completely dark where he stood, except for the scattering of stars visible beyond the edge of the hatch cover overhead.

  “The old Jew’s losing his grip,” Callahan was saying in his whiskey-confident voice. “He’s hitting the sauce. There’s a certain vacancy there.”

  “I wouldn’t attempt to exploit that,” Negus replied. “I think it would be unwise.”

  “It would be plumb fatal,” Callahan said. “Even half out of it old Naftali’s worth ten of the punks you see around now.”

  “Speaking of punks …” Negus began—but Callahan cut him off.

  “Speaking of punks—stay off the kid’s back. I don’t want him getting all disgruntled and paranoid. We don’t have to live with him long and he’s going to come in handy.”

  “Handy for what?” Negus asked. “For playing kneesies with Dee is all.”

  “You playing kneesies with him, Dee?”

  “I confess,” Pablo heard her say; he was startled. “I was playing hot kneesies with him. I dig him.”

  “If you fuck him,” Callahan said, “that rather makes him one of the family. I think that’s going too far.”

  Negus uttered a series of low cautioning obscenities. “I wish the governance around here would pull its socks up. We’re doing serious business and the whole vessel’s stoned, drunk or sopored.”

  There was a brief silence and then laughter.

  “Pablo’s all right,” Callahan said. “For our purposes.”

  “I gotta admit he ain’t as bad as some of ’em,” Negus said. “He’s a hard-ass and that’s good if he knows his place in things.”

  “I think he does,” said Mrs. Callahan. “Pablo Tabor is one of life’s little yo-yos. He wants to please and he’ll do just fine.”

  His ear pressed against the cold sweating woodwork, Pablo’s mind beheld the picture of a red yo-yo on a red, white and blue string with a store sticker on it that said “Made in Japan.” He had forgotten that he was high; he was more puzzled than angry. I’m gonna fuck her brains out, he thought.

  Negus was swearing again. “You see the fucking weaponry he had on him? He was armed to the goddamn teeth. Shit!”

  Another silence and Negus said: “Tino don’t like him.”

  “Tino’s not too big on the whole number,” Callahan said.

  “Well,” Deedee Callahan said, “Tino’s a fucking mystic. How can you go by Tino?”

  “I’m inclined to go by him,” Negus said. “I been with him fifteen years in all weather.”

  Crouched in the hold, Pablo heard a step on the deck above him. He heaved himself against the boards and saw a shadow pass between his hiding place and the night sky. It would be Tino, he thought. Coming up from the lazaret. From going through his gear. He bent lower and listened.

  “Naftali still take his money up front?” It was Negus.

  “First thing that happens is Naftali gets his dough. He’ll be on the pier with his hand out.”

  “Chrissakes,” Negus said, “that old boy rakes it in. I seen him peel off hundred-dollar bills like they was lempiras. I think he keeps it all in his hotel room, I swear.”

  Pablo was thinking of an old boy in a hotel room full of hundred-dollar bills when he was startled once more by a sound on deck. He looked up and saw the outline of a man directly above him. It could only be Tino again. After a few moments, the man moved off aft. Pablo waited, too anxious to eavesdrop further, and then climbed silently out of the ice hold. He saw no one. For a while he leaned on the rail expecting to be
challenged—but there was no further sign of Tino and he was reassured. He went down into the lazaret, found his gear in good order and climbed into his rack.

  Negus and the Callahans sat late in their paneled cabin while the Cloud ran on automatic. Tino was brewing coffee in the galley.

  “We getting ice and fuel from the Perreiras this time?” Negus asked. He was hunched in a captain’s chair, his bony arms folded on the table. Callahan sat across from him nursing a glass of soda water. His lady reclined on a short sofa, her feet up, reading High Times.

  “I don’t think so,” Callahan said. “I think we’ll get grub and parts from the Perreiras, then after dark we’ll go over to Naftali’s outfit in Serrano. We can get fuel from him along with the goods.”

  “What’ll we tell Perreira?”

  “We’ll tell him Naftali made us a better offer. He won’t press it. He’s not aggressive.”

  “Always wondered how Naftali got away with running that operation,” Negus said. “You’d think the Dutch would know it. Or the Americans.”

  “Maybe they do. Anyway it’s Naftali’s property, he owns it and he’s pretty fucking careful. Or else Mossad owns it and they’re super-careful.”

  Tino came down from the galley carrying a cup of coffee and took a chair. He spoke briefly to Negus in Papamiento.

  “You’re unhappy,” Callahan said to him.

  “I don’ like dat mon,” Tino said. “Pablo.”

  “Hell, I don’t like him neither,” Negus said. “But he ain’t supposed to be a nice fella. He’s our sonuvabitch.”

  “You approved him, Tino. You said you’d ship with him.”

  “So I gon to,” Tino said.

  Callahan kept his eyes on the engineer.

  “You’re sort of off the whole enterprise, in my opinion.”

  Tino smiled sadly.

  “De ting can be done, capt’n. De money’s good.”

  “I think,” Negus said slowly, “that Tino’s concerned about the way things are being done lately.”

  “Meaning what?” Callahan asked.

  “I ain’ sayin’ dat, Fred. You sayin’ dat, not me.”

  “Look, Jack,” Negus said, “you have to admit that we been getting lax. You been drinking a lot, there’s that. You been drinking on the job, so to speak. The both of you been acting like there’s no tomorrow. I mean, the days are past when you can operate down here in a spirit of fun like.”