Algren at Sea (49 page)

By making a determined effort, I felt I could suppress the impulse to hand Alina my wallet and watch. My lust for his hipless, breastless, stenciled, penciled, pseudo-Caucasian heroin-head was also governable.

“Our ship leaves in an hour,” I informed him, putting my hand on his shoulder reassuringly, “may the shoes never be made that'll walk over your grave.”

“The past is done,” he announced as if, were it not for him, it would still be here. “What she once was she no longer is!” If it was Alina he was talking about that was a change for the worse, it seemed to me.

We returned to our table linked arm in arm.

“Wh
eee-
sk
ee!
” he demanded loudly, “wh
ee
-sk
ee!
” and a waiter came whizzing with a bottle and glasses.

“To Alina!” The Slouch raised his glass, and we all raised ours but Alina.

“Me no drink longside nutty-nut,” she told us.

“He's jealous of you,” I urged her, “he wants to marry you.”

The thin crimson line of Alina's lips broke into a grin.

Her teeth had gone bad.

“
Me
no marry nutty-nut.
Him
no give Alina money. Him all the time say
pong-pong, pong-pong—
but him no pay one goddamn dollar! Me say, ‘Go longside ship, nutty-nut, I make
busyness
—him say ‘love,
pong-pong,
love,
pong-pong
'”—she threw a slanty glance at him with sufficient fury—then drank to him all the same.

Concannon began heaping the packages. We had just time to make the ship.

The Slouch liked the idea of our leaving so much he helped to speed us to the dock. When Alina picked up a shopping bag, he took its other handle. He wanted to be certain we wouldn't abduct her.

This pair were leading the loot parade, Concannon toting the gin, Quong the Scotch and Suzi and I bringing up the rear with the transistors, when the door opened from the outside and here was Manning blocking our way again.

“I
can't
let you get the ship in trouble, Concannon,” he announced.

Concannon put his bottles down and, with ominous care, rested his hands on Manning's shoulders.

“
That
won't do you any good,” Manning assured him confidently.

Concannon spun him aside, picked up the bottles, and again led us forth. It
had
done some good after all.

“The old man is going to hear about this!” Manning warned us. “This isn't the end of this!”

We fell inside the cab every which way. I had Alina on my lap and Concannon had Suzi Sumatra upon his and Quong was sitting on somebody that couldn't be anybody but The Slouch.

“To the docks!” our leader ordered and toward the docks we wheeled.

“
Looooot!
” my mascaraed ghost cried out, her head poking out of the window to the throngs of Ho-Phang Road—“
Looooot! Looooot!
”
—
while The Slouch fingered the hem of her skirt secretly, poor slouch.

“I hope the sonofabitch misses the ship,” was Concannon's only reference to the purser we'd left behind us.

Riksha and trolley, bus and jeep swerved, skidded and reeled, beggars fled and an American seaman threw beer cans at us. “
Big fis' in river!
” Quong threatened him. A policeman whistled, fire broke out in a tenement and a Chinese child waved goodbye to us with a blue balloon.

Goodbye to the girls of Ho-Phang Road, goodbye to all wives left on the beach, goodbye to all Slouches madly in love and all Americans gone bamboo. Goodbye to Hum Hong Bay and the Chinese Y.M.C.A., the Kowloon Cricket Club and the Yaumati Vehicular Ferry. Goodbye to ancestral Kowloon and farewell to old Hongkong. I'm glad I saw your waxen whores may I never see them again.

The shore-launch was rocking at the dock. Suzi and Alina rushed the bags into the launch—and then sat down for the shore-to-ship ride. The Slouch tried to climb in beside Alina.

“Nutty-nut go home!” Alina cried out, so I shoved him back onto the dock—now here comes Manning breathing hard. As he clambered in he took command.

“Let's
go!
” he demanded of the driver—yet the driver wouldn't go.

“Letty go!” Quong commanded him too.

Yet he wouldn't go.

“What's he waiting for?” Concannon asked.

“He wants pay,” Quong explained.

“Company pays for ship-to-shore transportation,” Concannon remembered.

“The company launch went to Hongkong,” Manning reminded us, “you went to Kowloon.”

Manning was right. Manning was
always
right. I paid the driver.

“You fuckin' purser,” Concannon told Manning.

“Nobody calls
me
a fuckin'—” Manning began and Concannon hooked a short right to his face. Instead of pulling back, Manning doubled forward with his forearms across his head, leaving himself wide open. Concannon slammed his left into the stomach and Manning went face-down, his arms still quaintly protecting his ears. Bottom up and face bleeding onto the boards, Manning looked like a fish whose gills have been ripped.

Concannon began kicking.

Alina came at him with her spindling arms straight out, her face still a mask—the boat lurched and Concannon teetered.

I got between him and Manning.

“You won,” I announced. “See?” I asked Suzi and Quong, “
See?
Sparks won!”

Suzi turned her face toward the dock as though regretting having left it. Quong looked solemn.

“
You
stay out of this,” Concannon warned me. He was hot, but he couldn't get at me because of Alina kneeling, in front of him, beside Manning. She gave Manning a handkerchief to hold to his face and had gotten him into a half-sitting position before Quong and I had the sense to see he was too heavy for her. We got him to the end of the boat and let him sit with his face toward the water. Alina held his head so he could throw up. Then she cleaned his mouth with her scarf and threw it over the side.

She sat beside him, protectively, until we hove to the
Malaysia Mail.

Captain Karensen was hunched over the rail so mad he could spit: had it not been for not having anyone to replace Concannon he would have been gone half an hour. We let Manning get up first. He dimbed painfully. I let Sparks go up right behind him in case Manning should fall. Quong scrambled up after Concannon. Not one of these fools remembered our loot. Karensen didn't look ready to delay his sailing hour in the interest of our black-market investment. I heard the anchor being raised.

I shoved one transistor under my belt and got one under either arm. The hell with the booze. “You take,” I told Alina what to do with the rest of the loot. How a man could climb a two-story rope ladder with only teeth and fingertips I hadn't figured out, yet I made it all the same. Bridelove and Muncie helped me over the rail.

Manning was stretched on the deck. That had been a perfectly dandy shot to the stomach and a fairly good kick in the eye. It had started to bleed again. Well, that's what comes of mixing with foreigners.

Bridelove, Muncie, Smith, Danielsen and Chips were more interested in my shirt than Manning.

“Wash it out with lukewarm water,” Chips advised, “hot water'll shrink it.”

When I looked at my bloodied shirt I understood: they assumed by it that it was myself who'd whipped Manning.

“How'd it start?” Bridelove asked.

“Ask Sparks,” I suggested.

The launch below was wheeling about. Alina was at the rail no larger than a child, looking up. Only the mascara shadowing her eyes showed it wasn't a child's small face.

I waved, but she didn't wave back. Just stood looking up while I looked down; until I could no longer see her face.

Her face so young yet so old.

Manning opened the store for an hour that night just for the honor of the thing. But he was wearing dark glasses.

I didn't ask him how he was feeling. I went down to see whether the crew had any questions they might care to ask.

Smith was at his green-baize board, sitting slantwise to favor a boil he'd been developing on his behind, and shuffling a deck, but he had no players. A few seamen were sitting around, but none expressed curiosity about my bloodied shirt: my moment of glory, that had struck so brilliantly, had been too brief.

“Believe me when I tell you,” Smith began, “the Marquis of Kingsbury, you can have him. Did you know his own son whipped him? I'm glad he did. I wish I'd whipped him myself. I could have, too. I beat better men than the Marquis of Kingsbury.”

It wasn't easy to visualize Smith, with his jaw jutting upward from a neck fixed at angle, maneuvering an opponent around a ring.

“Did the bob-and-weave type of opponent ever give you any trouble, Smith?” I inquired tactfully.

Smith stopped shuffling. “What you're trying to ask is how could a man with his neck on one side be a fighter,” he read me—“I took it up after my career as a gas-smeller was ended. In fact I contracted this hitch from such a terrible blow in the Adam's apple that it ruint
another
highly promising career.”

“Were you
really
any good, Smith?” I asked.

“To tell you the truth, no, sir, I wasn't,” Smith admitted. “But I
did
have color.”

“How do you mean?” I wanted to know.

“Well one thing I done was I always wore a cap with the peak over my
eyes into the ring. It worried my opponent not to see my face. I'd keep it on till the ref made me take it off just before the bell. Once a ref forgot and I had it so low I couldn't see my opponent and he knocked me cold. After that I just depended on my natural skills of which I had only two.”

“Which two were they?” I asked to be obliging.

“One was how I never threw a low punch without following through with a fair one—they can't take a knockout back, can they? No fight crowd would stand for a referee doing that even if he could. This also had the effect of making the fight look to be on the level. My other thing was how I never pulled my head back when I butted, so's I wouldn't get butted back.”

I waited.

“Once I was fighting a fellow with a skinny neck. He hit me low right off and, when I held, he hit me a short one in
my
neck. At the bell he had his entire glove in my eye. So I dropped my hands and he hit me a clean shot that nearly took my head off. I realized then he had the referee so I didn't foul him back—I was afraid the ref would take the round away from me. And I didn't want to lose because I wanted to buy a Chevrolet. I had to beat him fighting fair or lose the Chevvy.

“When he came out for the second round he made as though to touch my gloves but I didn't accept his offer. So he bent me over a ring-post and laid his full weight on me till I thought my spine would crack before his referee took him off. Then he banged both my ears at the same time and backed off with his gloves up as if he had just been
boxing
somebody.

“I looked at the referee for help and that was another mistake, because this fellow immediately punched me in the neck again. It was the second fair punch of the fight and he had thrown both.

“Wouldn't you think the crowd would be proud of him for throwing two fair punches? They weren't. They booed. They thought punching a man in the neck was a foul. ‘If he hits me in the neck a couple more times,' I thought, ‘maybe the referee will take the round away from him.' When I went back to my corner I knew I would never be able to finish on my feet. So I said ‘Goodbye Chevrolet.'

“I went out head down and butted him in the stomach. He went ‘
Oof.
' I brought my skull up against his right eye. He went ‘
Jzzz.
' Then I got my left glove around
his
neck. It was so skinny I could feel his windpipe through my glove. While he was choking to death I stepped on his foot.
‘How does it feel?' I asked him. ‘I'm disappointed in you,' he told me. My butt hadn't opened his eye so I dragged my laces across it and it opened fine. The referee noticed I'd changed my style. ‘If you boys want to fight like this it's all right with me,' he told us.

“I pulled up my trunks and went to work. I butted him again and said, ‘O, Pardon Me.' I scraped his back against the rope and said, ‘O, Pardon Me.' ‘Stop saying “O, Pardon Me,”' this fellow told me, and chopped me in the neck so hard I felt something come loose, so I drove my left five inches into his groin and I guess it must have stung him because he didn't express disappointment. He just doubled over like he was looking for something. I straightened him up with an elbow and hooked a
clean
left to his jaw. It was the fairest, cleanest punch I ever threw in my whole life. He went out like a light.