by Jim Nisbet
“Job well done,” Charley replied. “I’ll give him that.” Although, he added to himself, if some PhD ever publishes the authoritative text on maritime anal retention, this barky would sail fair on the dust jacket.
“So,” continued the live-aboard, “comes the launch—back in the twenties we are—and with it the hour for our doctor to take possession of her. His beautiful society wife busts a flagon of bubbly across her stem and down the ways she slips. Sure, there’s all kinds of swells aboard her, relatives and politicians and whatnot, and a smart crew to man her. Up goes canvas. It’s one or two of a summer’s afternoon and—by the time they pass Yellow Bluff?—the westerly’s blowin’ the dog off his chain. The hired skipper shapes her up for a beam reach heading straight for the Golden Gate. Mind … ,” the live-aboard wagged the finger, “this is before there’s a bridge.”
Charley raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t thought of that. It must have been beautiful.”
“Sure it was beautiful,” the live-aboard scowled, no less certain than if he’d been there himself. “And they’re just clippin’ along on the starboard tack, all set up, tunin’ this and that. Lime Point is abeam, with all the Pacific beckonin’ ’em on, when the hired skipper invites the owner to take the helm.” The live-aboard stepped back and saluted. “The kid—I say kid, but he was all of 35—has been waiting two years for this moment. He takes the helm eagerly. After a minute or two watching, the hired skipper says, ‘Pleased to report, sir, but ye’ll want to be comin’ about to starboard or jibin’ to port, and that sooner than later, on account ye needn’t sail up onto Baker Beach yer first time out.’”
“Or ever, for that matter,” Charley confirmed.
“‘Immediately,’ replies the doctor with enthusiasm: ‘Ready about!’
“‘On the owner’s command!’ shouts the skipper.
“‘Ready about, sir!’” bellers the bosun, and man and boy they jump to the sheets.
“‘Helm’s alee!,’ screams the owner. ‘Helm’s alee!’ goes the call. The owner spins the wheel and Martin Eden passes her bow through the eye of the wind.” The live-aboard struck his palms together. “Smart as a knife through spotted dick.”
“That be smart,” said Charlie, amused.
“Her foresail aback it’s ‘Leggo sheets!’ Mind, it’s the first the owner’s steered the vessel under sail, let alone spun the wheel. Hell, it’s the first time anybody’s spun the wheel. It’s the first time she’s tacked! She’s going as good as she’ll ever go, in thirty knots of wind with everything up, and she’s a sight to behold. All of ten knots she’s makin’, with a bone in her teeth, and all eyes lay aloft to witness the canvas crack round. But the owner has spun the wheel all the way to starboard. So that, as the hands smartly sheet her flat, the westerly near laid Martin Eden on her beam ends.” The live-abroad sighed and patted the cheek of the boom. “‘Ease sheets!’ roars the hired skipper. ‘Let us be chased back into the bay!’ But the owner, inexperienced and out of his depth and panicked too, doesn’t know what this means, and, not knowing what to do, he does nothing. He just holds his new wheel all the way to starboard in this great blast, and the next thing anybody knows Martin Eden has continued round, the sheets are eased but she’s doing a doughnut, as the racers say, from a starboard tack to a port tack downwind—that’s about 180 degrees of it. But she continues round! ‘Harden the main!’ roars the hired skipper. ‘For your lives,’ screams the bosun, ‘harden the main!’ But now it’s her stern that swings through the eye of the wind, and quick as the fo’c’s’le downs a ration of rum, this barkey jibes somethin’ horrible.” The live-aboard flattened the palm of his hand against the polished cheek of the main boom with a smack. “This great damn spar sweeps the after deck entire, starboard to port, and keeps right on going to the ratlines, gear and canvas aflyin’. That she wasn’t dismasted on the spot and rolled to splinters in front of Fort Point was certainly a matter of luck and stout craftsmanship. But there wasn’t luck sufficient to go round, not on that day.”
The live-aboard paused. A Western gull lifted off the other end of the dock with a cry of protest and fled across the harbour. “As the leech shivered but before the boom could come back with a crack of canvas fit to alarm a seaman, the hired skipper tackled the owner’s wife, who happened to be the one standin’ next to him, and brought himself and her sprawling in a heap on deck as this tree of a spar swept overhead. Like the scythe of doom, it properly was. A seaman knew to duck, of course. And the other society swells just happened to be amidships or below, out of harm’s way. But the menace cold-cocked the owner right on his punkin, crushed it proper like, right where he stood at the helm, blowed a load a bloody snot out his hooter, and launched the poor sod’s remains clean over the taffrail.” The live-aboard skipped one palm off the other, beneath the boom and to port. Charley followed the gesture with his eyes. “The young owner was dead before his ballast was overboard. He hit the water and kept right on goin’, too. Never to be seen again.”
In the momentary silence a mild surge entered the harbor and passed among the boats tethered there. Amid the creak of docklines, Martin Eden rose and settled in sequence with the rest of the craft.
“By the time they got Martin Eden shaped up to have a look around, the young doctor’s body was gone with the ebb. They ranged all the way out to the western corner of Four Fathom Bank, about five miles, lookin’ for him, to no avail, and sure, it must have been a quiet sail back to Sausalito. To this day the lad’s Gladstone bag is buried in that little triangle of sod hard by the First Unitarian Church, at Franklin and Geary. Next to the preacher who built the place. Forget his name.” The live-aboard cleared his throat, took two steps aft, and spat over the stern. “About six months later,” he continued, wiping his beard with his sleeve, “she married that skipper.”
“Who did?”
“Why, the doctor’s widow. She waited a decent term, then married the bloke what saved her life. Brought him a tidy dowry, too. That sawbones owned half of Russian Hill.”
Charley looked toward the city. Five miles across the bay, the front window of a northbound cable car glinted as it dropped off the crest of Powell Street.
“She sold Martin Eden before the wedding, though,” the live-aboard added, “to the first willing man who come along with a dollar. And stranger to tell, maybe? In eighty years her berth has never left the San Francisco Bay.”
The live-aboard passed a hand along the burnished taffrail, and shook his head wistfully.
“She’s a lot of vessel for one dollar. …”
What’s the moral of this story? yawned the bosun.
I don’t know, said Charley, startled out of his rumination. The tube of aloe vera lay across the palm of one hand. A dab of its cream lay on the palm of the other. He squinted aft. The water bottle had drifted out of sight.
How about, suggested the bosun, you don’t have to be a rich fuck to get ruined by an accidental jibe?
That must be it, Charley nodded, kneading salve into his trapezium.
Either that, the bosun added, or you might draw the conclusion that, if you bide your time? If you keep a weather eye?
Yes?
There will always be a deal on a boat. The bosun clicked his tongue. It’s a buyer’s market.
Always. Charley smiled faintly. Absolutely.
SIX
SKIP FAULKNER HANDED A LETTER OVER THE BAR. “THE LATEST FROM THE tropics.”
Quentin ordered a beer and a glass of soda water as Tipsy opened the letter. Sis, the first line read, I’m not going to bullshit you. She put the letter down. “Goddamn it.” She stared at the glass of beer. “I prefer being bullshitted.” She picked up the letter. I’ve gone back to work. She put it down again. “Goddamn it.”
Quentin didn’t bother to tear his eyes from the television, which nattered in Spanish from a shelf above the far end of the bar. On its screen, the Secretary of Homeland Security stood behind a podium emblazoned with the seal of his authority and moved his mout
h. Behind him multiple repetitions of the words Código de Naranja covered an entire wall. Beneath him a crawl announced a delayed start time of 5:45 P.M., Pacific Standard Time, for the Forty-niners game, due to the President’s speech, followed by the headlines Muerte Misteriosa Del Activista Famoso, and Este Noche á las 23 horas: ¿Numero Uno? ¡No Es Vale La Pena! “What?”
“Those cops are on to something.”
“I wish we could say as much for Homeland Security. Hey, Faulkner.”
“Yo.”
“May I ask why it is that you guys are watching TV in Spanish?”
Faulkner didn’t even look at the screen. “What difference does it make?”
But this is it. The last job.
Tipsy said, referring to her brother’s letter, “I don’t believe it.”
“I don’t either,” Faulkner replied, referring to the television.
“I don’t think anybody does,” Quentin said, referring to Tipsy and Faulkner.
I’m sick of working on the rich man’s boat. But it’s the only way to make an honest living down here, if you can call it honest, and it’s that simple. Sure I’ve met a few owners of sufficiently kindred spirit. Interesting people, self-made people, kind and generous too, some of them. But it comes to nothing more than cocktails and servitude, sailing around with or without the owner to places they want to be or think they want to be or don’t even show up to be. There’s a certain pride to keeping things shipshape and bright no matter whose rig it is or how much it cost, pride being separated from vanity by the lonesome comma haunting the four figures of your cruising kitty. But there’s fear among these people now, Tipsy. They’re particular about every port they sleep in, they make sure they’re surrounded only by others of their ilk. Security—as in how not to get kidnapped—has become an undeniable issue. Megayachts are carrying thugs and automatic weapons under the rubric of “Private Security.” You raft up with one of these things—120, 150, 175 feet on the waterline—all night long there’s a guy on the after-deck helipad with a weapon and an earbud. And it’s not the Top 40 he’s listening to, he’s in touch with a similar guy on the bow. The boat’s lit up or not. There’s a party aboard or there’s only the owner and a playmate. Makes no difference.
And it’s not misplaced, this fear. There’re places now these boats don’t go. There’s a very narrow strait called Baab al Mandab, for example. It’s the gateway to the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden. To the north and east for some four hundred miles the entire coast is Yemen, one of the most lawless countries in the world. I once met a guy who worked for the company that built the first jetport in Yemen, in the seventies. He compared the experience to landing a time machine in the Stone Age.
But the consensus is, the Stone Age needs money too.
The western boundary of Baab al Mandab is Djibouti, which isn’t the smallest country in Africa, but it’s close. To the north is Eritrea, to the south Somalia, and directly west, not a hundred miles from the main port, also called Djibouti, lies some hundred and sixty thousand square miles of Ethiopia.
To brand this part of the world a lawless place is to underestimate it. It’s a lawless planet. And, an epifocus of this world, Baab al Mandab is fraught with piracy.
The stories are legion. You might recall an oil tanker getting hijacked there, but no yacht attempts the straights alone anymore, never mind singlehanded. If one were to be so foolish, he’d soon find himself buzzed by a panga—a type of long, thin, flat-bottomed skiff with a pair of 200 horse outboards hanging off one end. This is the outrider, the scout. Two or three passes and he’s off. Come twilight, however, the lone yachtsman will find himself with a two-panga escort, each manned by three or four men. Each man is armed to the teeth—a knife, a pistol, maybe an RPG, and some type of automatic weapon, most commonly a Kalashnikov. It’s a good choice. I remember guys in the American War, guys who had been in-country long enough, who tossed the AR-15 in favor of the AK-47 …
“The American War,” Tipsy said aloud.
“Which war?” Quentin asked.
“The American War,” Tipsy repeated.
“Oh, sure,” Quentin replied. “That’s what the Vietnamese called it—still call it.”
“Charley calls it that, too.”
“You mean the one we should have won?” piped a voice beyond Quentin.
Tipsy leaned back for a look. Two stools down the bar stood a thin young man in a pink polo shirt with a little American flag pinned to the lapel.
“But we didn’t win it,” Quentin pointed out, without bothering to turn around.
The young man’s expression tightened.
“That’ll be five dollars even,” Faulkner told him.
The man retrieved a wallet from a back pocket of his khaki trousers and selected a five dollar bill from it, which he handed to the bartender. “So why didn’t they call it the French war?” he said, closing the wallet and taking up his pint of beer.
“I’m sure they did call it the French War,” Quentin replied in his most reasonable voice, “while they were still fighting the French. The Vietnamese won that one, too.”
“So,” said the young man, sipping barm off the top of his draft. “Are you a Communist?”
“Worse,” Quentin smiled thinly. “I am the son of a Communist.”
“Your paradigm is exhausted,” the man replied. It was almost as if he were sympathetic.
“Now there’s a leap of faith. But,” Quentin shook his head, “no such luck. My dad was with Harry Bridges from the beginning.”
“Sadly misguided,” the young man sadly suggested.
Tipsy blinked at this individual, turned to look straight at the televised imagery for a moment, and then, hardly breathing, turned to Quentin, who sat to her right.
Quentin gestured toward the beer in the young man’s hand. “You forgot to tip the bartender.”
“No, I didn’t,” the young man answered.
“Stay thrifty.” Quentin pushed a dollar off the top of his own change toward the beer tap. “Maybe you’ll save enough to pay off the current American war.”
Tipsy laughed aloud. It was a generous, inclusive laugh, much as if she were inviting the young man to laugh along at her companion’s surly remarks. But the young man wasn’t laughing.
“Dude,” he said. “Are you serious?”
“As serious as a black man can be in this society.”
“Hey, man,” said the young man, holding the beer to his chest. “I’m black, too.”
“Really?” Quentin looked him in the eye. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well.” Tipsy politely cleared her throat. “It’s been a long time since I’ve witnessed a conversation in which every word counted.”
Quentin took it right up. “Which conversation was that?”
The young man started to say something.
“Get the fuck away from me,” Quentin said abruptly.
The young man blinked.
“And, yes, dude,” Quentin added, “I’m serious.”
After a moment’s thought the young man took up his wallet and his pint of beer. “I think I’ll check out the patio.”
“See what you can find out about the American War while you’re out there,” Quentin said to the man’s retreating back. “Christ. What’s this town coming to?”
“Quentin,” Tipsy pointed out, “didn’t your dad and Harry Bridges get their heads cracked, and more than once, up and down this very waterfront?”
“Yes, they did,” Quentin said.
“Not only that, but wasn’t your father the only black man in the Longshoreman’s union?”
“No.” Quentin took a sip of soda water. “There were two of them.”
“So what’s so new or even offensive about brain-boy there thinking along the lines of communism as evil and the Vietnam War as winnable?”
“Nothing,” Quentin shook his head. “Opinions are like assholes …”
“Everybody has one,” she finished.
“It’s just that
I expect more from my fellow Franciscans.”
“He probably does too.”
Quentin sighed. “At least it didn’t come to blows. I might have hurt the kid pounding some sense into him.”
“Are you kidding? He’s probably got a black belt in tort litigation. One smudge on his alligator and he’d sue you for everything you own.”
“It’s a crocodile.”
“Then he’d breed and spawn in the very house he took away from you.”
“That’s disgusting. Stop it. I’m trying to drink sensibly.” He took a sip of water. “So what else does Charlie have to say?”
“When I left off, he was using one form of piracy to justify another.”
…they have grappling hooks, radios, ammunition, and no scruples whatsoever. Some of them even see their cause as just. You can heave to and take your chances, but your chances are two: get cleaned out and stay alive, or get cleaned out and killed. If you have a woman with you—or are one—you have
to run, because slavery is her alternative. But they can outrun any sailboat or even a freighter. Some of these pangas can do forty knots. Or you can go down with a fight—but down is going to be the end result.
Why am I telling you this? The yachts I’ve been working on don’t even think about Baab al Mandab. They meander from pleasure port to pleasure port here in the Caribbean and in the Mediterranean, seeking others of their class. It’s not unlike squid mating. Remote travel doesn’t faze them at all, but if you’re not being seen for the sake of being seen, and sized up for the sake of assessing the degree of your excess, and by your own kind, why spend seventy or eighty million dollars on a boat?
But it’s more insidious than that. These people don’t want to see their boats in Baab al Mandab. They know it’s dangerous. But it’s no longer safe for them in certain anchorages on the west coast of Guatemala, like it’s been almost any place in Colombia for years, like it has become up and down the coast of Brazil, and Panama, and Costa Rica …
The circle is closing.
What am I supposed to do? Get killed defending one of them?
