A Million Tears (59 page)

‘Hey,’ he called after me. I was in the street by the time he caught up with me and began protesting. ‘Slow down for Christ’s sake will you and let me talk?’

‘Nothing to talk about, Jake. If I hurry I may get to him while he’s still in his office. I’m sure he’ll be relieved to hear that I’ve withdrawn from it all.’

He caught hold of my arm. ‘Listen a minute, Dave. You at least owe me that.’

So I stopped.

He looked about him to ensure nobody was listening and lowered his voice. ‘That boat is about the fastest thing around these parts and a few more parts as well. You saw she ain’t exactly a trader. I told you about her general lines and build. With full sail she goes like a racing horse and don’t never need to stop,’ he paused. ‘Listen Dave, you’re the son of a Congressman and a lawyer. You don’t want to get mixed up in nothing I do. Just take the money and don’t ask any questions.’

‘So it’s illegal, whatever it is you do.’

‘Not against no United States law that I know of,’ he said haughtily. ‘Mexico isn’t that far away. And there’s a revolution brewing down there, though you wouldn’t know it to see the place. One day the people are going to overthrow Porfirio Diaz and to do so they need arms. It’s a social need I’m taking care of,’ he said with his grin.

‘Great. I’ll enjoy helping you help those oppressed people.’

‘Listen, you don’t know what you’re saying. So far I’ve been lucky. But there’ll come a day when the troops of that pig Diaz will see me and what happens then?’

‘You set sail for the open seas, leaving the peasants to fight,’ I half joked.

‘True,’ he said resignedly and then shrugged. ‘So why do you want to come along?’ He finally got round to the question.

‘Simple. I’m bored out of my mind. I want to go and do something different for a while before going home to marry and settle down to a life of making money.’

‘Hell, you’re out of your mind,’ he gave apparently considered judgement. ‘Okay, you can come. But I want you to know something. On the boat the captain’s word is law, you do exactly what I tell you, okay?’

‘Fine by me. I wouldn’t presume to usurp your authority. There’s only one catch to the whole business though, and that is we haven’t actually got the boat yet.’

The thought took his mind off me and back to his own problems. ‘Let’s go and see if them bastards have been there yet,’ he said gloomily. ‘I thought it was all over bar the celebrating.’

‘It could be if Guinn sees sense. If he doesn’t then it’s just starting. I’ll have to prepare a better case than any I’ve done so far. I’ll need to contact my father for a bit of influence, which’ll probably mean a trip home. Though I don’t know what he can do,’ I added thoughtfully.

When we got back to the boat there was a deputy waiting to see Jake and tried to hand him the seizure notice. Before Jake could take it I stepped in and received it. I cut off the startled ‘Hey,’ of the deputy by saying, ‘I’m Mr Kirkpatrick’s lawyer. I’ll take this. Mr Kirkpatrick is going on board to remove his personal belongings. He will be returning to the boat to live once the Judge has ruled for a new hearing. I suggest you inform the Sheriff.’

The deputy was fat, round and stupid. His gun was slung low on his right hip and his hand hovered near it all the time. I wondered if he practised fast draws while playing at being Jesse James.

‘What’s this? You can’t go on there. It’s now the property of Mr Guinn and he said that nobody, especially him,’ he jerked a thumb at Jake, ‘can go onboard again.’

‘Listen, deputy, I happen to know the law as well as Mr Guinn and he’s talking rubbish. This man is entitled to remove his personal gear.’ I scanned the warrant and smiled, Guinn had got it wrong. ‘Also, all other contents in the boat from sails to . . . to . . .’

‘Halyards?’ Jake supplied.

‘Yes. Because this warrant only mentions the boat, not the contents. So you go and tell Mr Guinn that if he wants an empty shell he had just better hold fire on preventing Mr Kirkpatrick from going onboard.’

‘Well now – I don’t know about that,’ the deputy scratched his ear with a sausage like finger. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘That’s fine, deputy, you don’t know. I think you’d better go and find somebody who does know, like the sheriff.’ I spun away and clambered awkwardly down onto the deck.

Jake shrugged at the deputy, gave his grin and leapt down after me. The deputy stood there, indecisive, and then walked away.

The problem only took a week before it was resolved. In that time we were threatened with all kinds of dire consequences if we did not obey the law as already stated in the first hearing. Judge Hogg came close to caving in under pressure but luckily when I drew the local newspaper’s attention to the case they wrote strongly in our favour and praised Hogg highly. It was enough to boost the little man’s ego sufficiently to order a retrial but before it came to that Guinn agreed to our demands. I paid what Jake owed for the final instalment and the boat was his again. The evening we got the boat back we went out to celebrate. I was stupid. I should have realised a man like Guinn wouldn’t take this laying down.

This time I drank the Champagne without the brandy and remained relatively sober. We were back in the bar of the Carlton and we had company. Jake had insisted on calling two girls over from the bar. They were both pretty in a brittle sort of way and both whores. Jake intended that we take them back to the boat with us, with me footing the bill.

While having a pee in the gutter outside I told him he could have them both. When he asked me if I was funny or not I didn’t know whether to laugh or hit him. Luckily for our future partnership and my immediate health, I laughed and told him about Gunhild.

I almost changed my mind when the blonde, sitting next to me, ran her hand up my leg. She was the prettier of the two, wore too much lipstick and rouge but had on a low cut blouse that showed off her breasts to the nipples. I felt myself reacting to her insistent hand.

‘Listen, Jake,’ my voice had taken on an odd croak, ‘why don’t you and the, eh ladies, go on back to the boat. ‘I’ll join you later, after I see about that business.’

‘Aw c’mon honey, you come with us too,’ she whispered in my ear, blowing softly and warmly, her hand and breath eroding my will power like a gale-lashed sea eroding a sand dune. Jake saw my discomfort and grinned wider, the louse.

‘Hell, look at the time. I’m late for my appointment already. You eh, finish the wine and I’ll eh, see you later.’ I hurried towards the door, drunk enough to be weaving and bumping into the tables in my path.

The air was hot and oppressive, hardly any different from the heat of the day. There were clouds, heavy with rain and it was pitch dark. I bumped into the first man and mumbled an apology. He pushed me hard and I staggered back into the arms of another man.

‘That’s him,’ said a voice I thought I recognised.

Before I could say or do anything a fist hit me in the stomach, knocking the breath out and pain in. Something connected with the back of my head and through a mist of pain and nausea I felt another knock somewhere around my left ear. The world spun so fast I dropped off the end into a dark pit.

When I came to I felt worse than I had after the drinking bout with Jake on that first day. For a second or two I thought it was still night and then with a shock I knew it was too dark and that I was blind. I tried to put my hand to my face.

‘Take it easy,’ said Jake, taking my hand. ‘Don’t disturb the bandage.’

‘My eyes, Jake,’ I cried out but it came in a whisper, ‘my eyes,’

‘It’s the bandages. Your eyes are okay, I promise you. You’ve got a busted nose, some cuts around the eyes, a lump like an egg on the back of your head and an ear half torn off. Apart from that,’ he said dryly, ‘there’s only a couple of cracked ribs and some nasty bruises. The doctor said you’re lucky to have such a thick skull or you could be dead.’

‘It was the deputy. I recognised his voice.’ My voice was stronger now and my throat as dry as hell. ‘Can I have some water, please?’

I heard him at the pump and took the mug of water he put into my hand. I drank thirstily before I asked, ‘So what happened then?’

‘Because it was dark and had just started to rain I didn’t dare fire at them so I yelled at the top of my voice and let a shot off into the air. They ran like hell and I stopped to look after you. I gave one of the girls twenty dollars to get a doctor I know; I promised her the same for herself when she returned.’

Jake was generous to a fault. The fault being it was not his money to be generous with. Not that I minded under the circumstances. ‘This is Guinn’s work,’ I said bitterly.

‘Sure it is,’ Jake’s voice sounded cheerful to me, ‘and forget about any sort of revenge. Take it from me you wouldn’t get near enough to shoot him with a rifle, never mind trying anything else.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about the law. I could have him arrested for . . .’ I did not get any further.

‘What you mean is you ain’t thinking at all. We know the deputy was there which means the other man was more than likely the sheriff. Look, I know this town and I know what I’m talking about. Guinn didn’t do it himself and he’ll have as many witnesses as the court will require to prove he had nothing to do with beating you up. And you won’t get near enough to hurt him. So just accept the beating and put it down to one of life’s experiences, okay?’

I grunted in my hurt and anger.

I slept a lot for the next three days. The pain was always there nagging at me, but by degrees it was lessening. The doctor came a few times, removed the bandages from around my head and localised them more on my nose. The back of my head gave me hell when I moved and I had a persistent headache for days. The doctor was very apologetic but he could not straighten my nose because it was too badly broken. All he could do was let the bones knit together as best they could. I could see in a mirror that under the scabs and dried blood it was going to be slightly to one side, flatter and broader. I wondered briefly what Gunhild would think of it.

After a week we sailed out of New Orleans. I could move without pain, my ribs were okay, the bruises were turning yellow and my ear was healing.

‘It’s something to do with stopping a build-up of silt in the river mouth. The banks here do change a lot and there’s not as many exits to the sea as there used to be.’

‘But what are they using those big raft things for?’

‘At low tide they tie rocks to them. Then as the tide comes in it lifts the rafts and picks up the rocks. They tow them into the shallows and when it touches bottom they wait for the next low tide and tighten up the ropes. They keep doing that until they’re in close to shore.’

‘Very interesting. The wonders of modern science.’

‘It ain’t modern. They was using it thousands of years ago in other countries,’ he grinned. ‘The engineer in charge of the work said so.’

Jake showed me the rudiments of sailing and told me some of the more common nautical terms. He explained what a forestay was, shrouds, reefs, cringles, clews, leaches, luffs, hoops and a lot other terms, most of which passed straight over my head. But slowly I was beginning to remember them.

‘Just about everything is connected to or with a piece of rope,’ explained Jake. ‘Forget the term rope, it’s too general. You need to be more explicit so that I know what bit of rope you’re talking about. Okay, what’s that bit of wood sticking out of the bow?’

That bit of wood was a three foot long mast, almost horizontal to the water, on which the foot of the jib sail was attached. ‘The bowsprit,’ I finally came out with after searching my memory.

‘Right. So what’s that bit of rope called?’

‘A bow stay,’ I hazarded a guess.

‘No, no, no, for Christ’s sake. It’s the bowsprit shroud,’ he screamed the last word, at the same time throwing his peaked cap on the deck. For a second I thought he was going to jump on it, but he disappointed me; he only kicked it. Watching it sail over board was unfair because the pain caused by my laughter was almost unendurable.