Jonah Watch

by Cady, Jack;

  Lamp reached with one foot to kick away the curving brass hook that secured the door. He closed the door carefully, like a man determined not to break anything. He twisted the worn, black light-switch and the office was illuminated. Howard backed toward the wardroom, dropped the mug, heard it smash. Howard was not a little frightened. Howard, and possibly no other man, had ever seen Lamp behave as Lamp behaved. Masters was not less than six feet, weighed not less than one-hundred-seventy, and yet, when Lamp leaned forward to snatch him by the belt and raise him into a corner of the office, Masters seemed like a small rag doll.

  "You yellowed on the boat deck," Lamp told him. "You're tryin' to start something." He gave Masters a shake, and Masters's head bonged against the angle formed by bulkhead and overhead. "Ain't you? Ain't you?"

  Masters gasped, tried to arch backward, either to kick, or to relieve pressure from the belt that was cutting beneath his small ribs, chewing at his kidneys.

  "Because if you can start something," Lamp said, and he rattled Masters against the bulkhead, "if you can get everybody scared, then the boys will forget you're yellow."

  "He's about to get hurt bad," Howard said timidly. "It's breaking his back."

  Lamp's forearm trembled. His voice lowered. He gave Masters a shake that rattled Masters's head into the corner with a beat as steady as a fighter on a bag.

  "I don't book guys," Lamp told Masters. "And I don't threaten them. This here's a promise."

  Masters choked, looked like he was dying.

  "One word. One. There ain't a place far enough, or a hole deep enough, that I can't find you. Got that? Have you got that?"

  Masters choked and gulped, tried to nod his banging head.

  "Okay. Out." Lamp dropped Masters, and Masters thumped gasping into the corner.

  "And take the word to Racca," Lamp told him. "Does he want something busted besides his arm?"

  Lamp shrugged, turned toward Howard in a nearly placid manner. He was like a man easy in his mind after making a small and successful decision. "I got this bad temper," he said apologetically. "Had to fight it pretty much all my life."

  Howard, who was mildly democratic, and who would have sworn that he could deal with reality, felt that the world which he thought he understood had just turned fish-belly up. "I better pick up these pieces," he said apologetically. He began to kneel to get the broken mug.

  Adrian skidded, kept skidding, kept skidding, to end with a thump that bent hinged knees and threw Lamp and Howard into squats. Masters, feeling his way to his feet, was knocked backward. He fell. Masters banged an already well-banged head.

  "Where did that come from?"

  "Count seven."

  Adrian ran another swell, banged hard, but it did not run the long line of travel that accompanied the first swell.

  "That's one."

  On the seventh swell, Adrian skidded, skidded, kept skidding, skidding, and the jolt rattled tables that were welded to the deck in wardroom and messdeck.

  "It's a new storm," Lamp said. "Or the other one moved in a circle."

  "No wind."

  "It's out there someplace."

  "If it's circling."

  "It may find us. Maybe not."

  Masters managed to stand. He did not exactly look chastened, but he looked like a man with a brand new way of viewing matters. "We got guys aboard that scow." He propped himself against a bulkhead, flapped one hand, helpless, turned to the hatch. He fled with all the dignity he could muster, about the same dignity owned by a mired donkey.

  "At least you stopped him talking."

  "Naw," Lamp said. "He'll talk. He just won't talk as loud."

  "What do you make ... ?" Howard pointed to the darkened wardroom.

  "It's a sign," Lamp said easily. "What we got to do is figure out the sign."

  Howard had lost count. He thought the next wave might be the seventh. He steadied himself. "You weren't afraid." The wave was the seventh. Adrian roller-coastered, thumped, crashed.

  "Nothing to be scared about," Lamp said. "Jensen was a shipmate." Lamp prepared to leave. "I got to figure some way to get these guys some coffee. I got to get something in some bellies." He was suddenly a man ridden by anxiety, like a high school boy dared by his pals into a date with an older and experienced woman. He seemed ready to bustle, to explain legends, to become, in fact, the Lamp whom Howard had known for so long.

  "Don't you ever sleep?"

  "Does Levere?"

  Howard was about to say that it was not the same. "I guess I ought to check Racca," he said. "Then go to the bridge. We're in for it."

  Lamp flapped one hand, helplessly. "I've lost friends," he said. "I'm awful sorry about your friend Wilson." Then he fled, a man chased by abstract demons of memory which now wore the mild and practical names of hot cereal and fresh coffee.

  In the hours before dawn the temperature plummeted; Howard, headed forward, stepped to the main deck to lean against a chain with both hands. The cold steel, the freezing air, and wisps of spray thrown from forward by the bow helped wake him. He stared into the dark sea that ran alongside, and he stood spraddle-legged against the increasing pitch. Phosphorescence spun past the hull in thin flashes like schools of fish. He tested for wind, found none except the small breeze raised by Adrian's passage. In the scuppers, water ran from the breaking bow wave, and, along the edges of the scuppers, mushy salty-water ice formed a thin line, a promise, a threat; the line like a pencil of definition running the circumference of the ship.

  Forward and to starboard, no more than a half mile distant, Aphrodite glowed against the dark sky and darker sea. Men were clustered forward. In the bright floodlights powered by a portable generator, the men moved like a congregation of shadows, as water washed across the sagging bow. They were like creatures of surf, primal; forms rising from the immense tide pool of the sea. Alongside Aphrodite the small boat bounced, was fended off by three, or possibly four, dark figures. The small boat moved alongside Aphrodite's hull, and the figures bent over a bulky lump from which lines radiated to the deck.

  Dane was attempting to rig a sea patch. Dane was not fooling around by casting the thing on the breath of a little hope, a little prayer. As Howard watched, Aphrodite turned its stern two points across the sea to press rushing water against the hull. The patch went over, the lines straightened, and the boat closed against the pitching yacht. For minutes Howard stood, leaning against the chain, mute. Then, from a distance, he heard shouting. He pushed himself erect, ready for action, a jolt of fear urging his feet toward the bridge. Then he stopped. The shouts were cheers. The wide mouth of the leak had sucked the patch.

  "We've got it," Howard said. "They did it, chum. They did it, Wilson." He hesitated, looking up and down the deck as if he expected a reply. The only sounds were the sea, the distant hum of the generator, and the faint and distant voice of Dane hollering commands.

  Chapter 19

  "We thought we'd lost that kid, boys. We were sure of it." Or so, in later years when cooking at the Base, Lamp would aver. By then, Lamp's huge arms were thinner. Sagging laps of flesh hung from his upper arms in that way of formerly robust women who have spent their lives among small cares, small hopes and large ambitions for others—and, of course, in company with brushes and laundry.

  "Maybe you should of lost him, cook. Maybe you shoulda." Always a young voice would say that. Always an older voice would snort with contempt, or would curse.

  Mother Lamp, who cherished increasingly the wayward souls of seamen, would bustle and tsk and wait until the smartmouth had tacked his short nail of wisdom through the wide, implied fabric of the tale.

  "It wasn't that way, sonny. You're listenin' with your mouth."

  "He's a red-blooded American punk, cook. Don't pay him any mind."

  "Brace was only a kid, himself," Lamp would say. "For awhile there he was a goner."

  In that large galley, where assistant cooks and stewards ragged and nagged apprentices with dull chores, Lamp was like the director
of a small and competent theater. In the waning days of his usefulness, and with indifference to the ambitions of lesser men who contrived to gain his excellent, shore-going job, it was Lamp's great luxury to sit garrulous on the messdeck—or, gaze silent, as if he still watched the crash of seas, like a man staring with serene indifference at memory, or at that black gulf which lies beyond all seas.

  "The real miracle was," he would say, "that wind never found us. And it was huntin'. That kid was trapped for days." Which was, in the creative scope of Lamp's memory, the truth; although it did not precisely match the facts.

  The facts, reconstructed after Howard ran like a skein of snoopiness through memory, the log, and conversations, were largely unornamental and bland.

  In sloshing water beneath the dull glow of emergency lanterns, Adrian's boarding crew flattened and shored the sea patch aboard Aphrodite. Brace worked at the task of rigging the pump. The compartment was narrow, awash, dark. It was certainly a dungeon when Brace became pinned shoulder deep in water beneath a shifting, tangled mire of gear.

  "Like Floyd Collins, boys. Stuck at the bottom of a mine."

  In those shadowed days when the world was still fabulous, before the rise of clans and explanations; before, even, the invention of hulls, the trapped Brace would have been the stuff of legends, of myth, of song. Before the race became old with knowledge, and thus voluntarily stupid, Brace would have courted and won a place among heroic tales told before dying fires. But ... in fact, he was only a terribly frightened youngster who was trapped in the forward compartment of Aphrodite.

  "Scared crazy," Glass told Howard on the following day as Adrian steamed slowly toward Boston, escorting Aphrodite which still ran heeled to port. "Of drowning. Dane smacked him around some."

  "We were all scared crazy," Howard said, and he seemed to be hearing echoes. "Brace's name came up in conversation."

  "Snow finally got him quiet," Glass said. "It took an hour to cut him loose."

  "It was a tough hour aboard this ship."

  The tough hour began when yeoman Howard, having seen the patch set into the heavy suction of the leak aboard Aphrodite, and having spoken honorably and well to Wilson, turned from the thinly iced main deck toward the after hatch. Above him on the boat deck the small sounds of a man working were as unconcerned and unapologetic as the movement of mice. Then the sounds stopped as the man realized that someone else was present. The pale face of bosun striker Joyce looked down, saw Howard, and Joyce released a huff of frozen breath. He steadied himself against a chain. Adrian swooped down a long swell.

  "You come topside for a minute?" Joyce's voice seemed more frozen, less mobile than his breath.

  Howard walked aft, mounted the after ladder and moved across the familiar deck. He was arrested by a lifeline.

  "In case the weather gets back up," Joyce said.

  "You need help?"

  "I already got the fantail rigged." Joyce pulled a wool mitten from one hand with his teeth, mumbled, used the freed hand to throw a turn and two half hitches. He looked like he was trying to warm his tongue. He mumbled, retrieved the mitten, pulled it back onto his hand. "Levere ought to know," he said. "This whole ship's awake. Guys are talking." He leaned on the line, jogged it, grabbed with mittened hands to rock back and forth with all his weight to test the line. "I don't need help," he said apologetically. He looked at the dark sea, turned to look forward, looked upward where the masthead floated and tipped, as though the mast were a string that danced and dangled the puppet ship Adrian.

  "Racca claims he's got the gangrene," Joyce said.

  "In his head. That was a clean break."

  "I wish Dane was here. I wish Snow was." Joyce gave a final bounce against the line. "I don't want to be on deck with Jensen around," he said, "and I don't want to go below. Racca's crazy."

  "I was scared," Howard told him. "Then Lamp said something. This is Jensen's crew. Jensen wouldn't do anything to hurt this crew."

  The mast tipped forward like an ancient weapon wielded to exorcise demons. Water fountained from the bow, white flowers of foam. The stack rumbled as positive as an introit. "I never thought of that," Joyce said. "That's good. You can't be scared when you think that." He twanged the taut line, grabbed it to enjoy the vibration through the mitten. For a moment he was nearly jubilant. Then, a man struck by an awareness of situation, he became a mourner. "Everybody's sorry about Wilson," he said. "Everybody's talking."

  "I'm not." Howard, who was occasionally known to have a happy fight with French or English sailors, looked down at his clenched fists. "This time," he said, "this time you can find out who to kill."

  "Guys say Wilson is what the sign was about." Joyce paused, for a moment at least, in the presence of murderous intent. "Maybe Wilson made a mistake," he murmured. "He maybe did it to himself."

  "He was a country boy," said Howard, "but he wasn't that much of a country boy."

  "Not me," said Joyce. "I'm from Philadelphia."

  "Let's get below. Get warm."

  Joyce twanged the line. He looked aft at the wake tossed and spread by the sea. He mumbled.

  "You coming below?" Howard turned, walked toward the after ladder.

  "Howard."

  "Yes."

  "I know what you mean about Philadelphia. But it's home, sorta. A guy can't help where home is."

  Ice lay in the cleats of the ladder. Thin silverings of ice lay on the taut lifelines stretched across the fantail. Howard went through the after hatch, crossed the fiddley and looked down to see McClean standing on the plates. Fallon stood at the board. His keglike shape was grouped into itself, like a caged bear held by invisible bars. Fallon looked up, saw Howard, motioned with a thick hand. McClean saw Fallon's motion, looked up into the darkness of the fiddley. McClean stood in the bright lights of the engine room like a tired man pinned to a landscape by intense sunlight. His nearly tan face was sweaty from engine heat and seemed radiant with light and sweat.

  Howard fumbled down the always almost-slick ladder. He arrived on the plates.

  "Lamp did a number on Masters," Fallon said. "You were there."

  "He had it coming." Howard was surprised. "Guys on the messdeck heard it?"

  "A mouse can't poot aboard this ship without." McClean stood easily on the plates, and his weight moved with the forward-running, wave-smacking motion of Adrian. "Masters ain't going to ‘fess getting licked by a cook."

  "Last thing Lamp ever licked was a spoon."

  "You weren't there," Howard told Fallon. "Lamp swabbed the deck with that guy."

  Fallon looked like he was trying to spell a tough word. "Maybe the kid. When Amon left, Lamp adopted the kid, sort of." Fallon looked at the board, reached to make a minor adjustment on a valve. His arm was thick, tattooed with a clumsy, unsinuous picture of a woman. Beneath that tattoo was another, the traditional fouled anchor.

  "He was taking care of the ship," Howard said. "Guys were afraid."

  "Guys are afraid."

  "Lamp said something." Howard explained. " ... Jensen ... his crew, after all ... wouldn't do anything to hurt this crew."

  "Now there's a relief," McClean said. "That there is a bonified relief."

  "Tell the guys up forward," said Fallon. "When you think like that, you can't get scared."

  "Lamp says it's a sign."

  "I never paid much attention to that cook. Y'know, that's a pretty good cook."

  Howard climbed from the engine room, stood on the grates and looked down into the brilliantly lighted space. The whooshing updraft of hot air and the rumble of the engines blanked the wash of the sea. McClean and Fallon stood unmasked as themselves. There was no illusion, no suggestion of Jensen on those plates. One sign seemed clear. Jensen did not want Brace in the engine room. Jensen seemed to be a jealous lesser spirit in the land of a jealous god.

  Forward and to port was the crew's compartment. Howard slowly descended the ladder. A man sat against the lower step of the ladder. He appeared as a dark bulk beneath the r
ed glow of dull nightlights. The ancient hull of Adrian creaked, rattled; the old steel still firm along the welds but growing infirm across featureless steel plates stretched between points of stress. Water that had been carried to the deck on boots lay in a thin, red sheen. The red lights toned the edges of shadow, and it intensified the darkness of shaded bunks and corners. The crew's compartment was not musty, as it would have been if men were sleeping. The smell, if it was a smell, telegraphed anxiety, and a sense of pending combat.

  The man who sat against the bottom step was hunched over, dark, stolid, and he did not turn as Howard descended the ladder. A few feet forward, and starboard in the compartment, the redhead Rodgers sat beneath a red light. He wedged between a bulkhead and a locker. Rodgers whistled thinly, and he seemed pleased with his innovation. He looked forward and to port, where midships in the compartment lay the dark form of Racca stretched on a bunk. Beside the bunk, and directly beneath a light, Masters stood like a Samaritan elf about to spread ointment or unction. Bosun striker Joyce, having preceded Howard, sat on a bottom bunk and watched the whistling Rodgers. Joyce's wet mittens lay in two small piles beside him, dark and steaming as venial sins. Joyce held a swab in one hand, and he pushed it back and forth across the area of deck he could reach without standing. Adrian pitched, rose to a high swell.

  Howard squeezed against a rail to pass the sitting man. It was Wysczknowski, and Wysczknowski looked at Howard, his tight-lipped Polack face a warning against abrupt movement.

  "Is it about anything," Wysczknowski said, "or are you another one asking for a rap in the chops?"

  Elfin Masters looked up, saw Howard, reached to tap the woozy Racca on his foot. Racca, like a man rehearsed, moaned, gave a small yelp, a creak like worn steel plates. Racca's uninjured arm flopped. His hand rose and groped in the space between two bunks. The hand floated pale and redly washed. Racca looked like he offered a blessing.

  Howard took a chance. "Are you all nuts?" he said to Wysczknowski.

  "Them two," Wysczknowski said and pointed at Masters and Racca. "I ain't sure about them others."