And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks (13 page)

“The bosun—” I began.

“Never mind the bosun!” he yelled. “Get off the ship. And you ought to drop a couple of quarters in the kitty for using that water for showers.”

I sat up indecisively.

“Did you hear what I said? Get off!” he shouted. “I don’t want anybody in my crew that won’t cooperate.”

“Are you the chief mate?”

“Yeah, I’m the chief mate.”

“Well,” I said, “what about the rest of the deck crew? I was led to understand that—”

“Never mind that. Get off now!”

I said, “All right, don’t get your water hot,” and started to pick up my shirt. Phil was standing in the corner of the fo’c’sle, looking at the mate. The mate scowled awhile at me and then left.

I jumped up from my bunk and went over to the locker and took out my gear. “Get your stuff,” I said. “We’re not staying on this damned ship.” I took my two canvas bags out of the locker and slammed them on the deck. Then I rushed down the alleyway to the officers’ mess.

They had the shipping articles laid out on tables in there, and there were several officers, some seamen signing on, and the shipping commissioner puffing on his pipe.

“What about Ryko and Tourian?” the shipping commissioner barked at me when I told him our names. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” I said. “What’s the story?”

“There’s no story. The chief’s ordered you two off the crew list.” With this the commissioner turned his head away.

I went back to the fo’c’sle, picked up my bags, and stepped out in the alleyway. “Fuck you all!” I hollered down the alleyway, and started for the gangplank with Phil at my heels.

The bosun was standing in front of the gangplank.

“Gettin’ off?” he asked.

“What the hell,” I said. “You told us to wait. What’s going on around here?”

The bosun looked at me a little blankly. He didn’t seem to know what it was all about, and evidently he didn’t even know that he had started it all himself.

“Are you signed on?” I finally asked him.

“I just did,” he said.

That was the payoff. I walked down the gangplank with Phillip.

The bosun followed us down. “Listen,” he told us on the dock, “you guys want to sign on and they won’t let you? Okay. That means you go down to the beef window at the Union Hall and collect a month’s pay from this company, see? Union rules say a seaman can’t be turned away once he’s assigned to a ship. Do you follow me?”

“Yeah,” I said, a little wearily.

And he went on to tell us everything about the union rules, and the month’s pay we had coming by rights, and how we should beef and beef, and how the mate had nothing on us.

In the end, I asked him to give us a dime so we could get home and he handed me a quarter, saying, “Don’t let that prick of a chief mate put anything over on you.”

So Phil and I started to walk back across the dock.

Longshoremen were loading on some U.S. Army tanks on a freighter across the way, and outside the shed a freight train was puffing in, hauling a string of flat-cars carrying tanks, jeeps, and trucks. In the slip a barge was docked, alongside another Liberty ship, and a tremendous crane was hauling up 20mm antiaircraft guns to the platform on the flying bridge of the ship.

Phil and I watched some of this for a while, then we picked up our bags and left.

It was still hot and sunny, so we stopped halfway up Montague Street to buy a quart of orange soda in a variety store. We sat on our sea bags outside the store and drank the soda, which was lukewarm and sweet.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Phil, who looked disconsolate. “Monday we’ll go to the beef window at the hall and get another ship.”

He didn’t say anything, so I went back into the store and cashed in the bottle, and then we walked to the subway at Borough Hall.

B
Y SATURDAY
I
WAS TIRED OF BEING A DETECTIVE
. The boss was an all-around heel and he kept encroaching on my leisure time with errands to do on the way home that turned out to be at the other end of town from where I live and took hours to do.

I got to Al’s about eight o’clock after one of these errands which involved a trip to the Bronx. We decided to go down to Washington Square and wish the sailors bon voyage.

When we walked into Apartment 32 I saw Barbara and Phillip lying on the couch. Phillip had nothing on but his khaki merchant marine pants, and Barbara was in her slip. They just lay there without moving. Phillip looked up at Al sullenly and moved a little closer to Barbara.

I walked past them into the other room. Mike and Janie were in the bedroom. Mike put on a pair of khaki pants and came out and said hello.

I sat down and said, “What time do you boys ship out in the morning?”

Mike said, “We’re not shipping out. We got fired.”

I said, “Fired? I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well that’s what happened. When we got on the ship the bosun came up to us and advised us not to sign on because the chief mate was a bastard. Well, we went downstairs, drank some milk, took a shower, and pretty soon the mate came down. Great big bastard, six-foot-four and red-haired. He says, ‘I hear you boys can’t decide whether to sign on or not. Get the fuck off this ship. I ought to charge you for taking a shower.’ So we were fired.”

Janie came out of the bedroom. She said, “I knew they wouldn’t leave.”

Mike said, “We’ll ship out Monday for sure.”

Janie said, “Yes you will.”

I sighed and said, “Have you people eaten yet?”

They all said no, and there was one of those discussions should we go out to eat or bring food back to the apartment. Janie said, “Let’s go out. I’m sick of sitting around this apartment. We’ve been here all day.”

Everyone began putting on clothes.

We walked over to a lunch counter on Sixth Avenue. I ordered some ice cream, since I had eaten an early lunch. Then I changed my mind and ordered a stuffed pepper. They both arrived together. The pepper was pretty bad.

Phillip sat down next to me at the counter, as far as possible from Al, who was at the other end of the counter.

After this terrible food, for which I paid since no one else had any money, we walked out onto Sixth Avenue and stood on the sidewalk by a high wire fence that ran around an apartment-house park. Al climbed over the fence and lay down in the weeds on the other side. Barbara sat on a bench and Phillip lay down with his head in her lap. People walked by in the hot night.

I was talking to Mike about the merchant marine and asked him why he didn’t wear a uniform around, to get all the free handouts.

He said, “It seems like a finkish thing to do.”

I said, “This is a finkish world.”

There was talk about going to see
La Grand Illusion
, but Barbara said she had seen it five times and knew just what Erich von Stroheim was going to do all the time.

The head-in-lap act had broken up and the young couple were on their feet now. Phillip was talking about
his father. I heard him say: “The old man should be out in a couple of years now.”

We decided to go across the street for some beer. Climbing back over the fence, Al slipped and fell heavily to the sidewalk. I helped him up and said, “Are you hurt?”

He said, “I think I twisted my ankle.”

Phillip and Barbara were already halfway across the street. We all went into a bar and sat at a table in the back. Al was limping.

There was a silly drunk dancing around in front of the jukebox, so we had one round, then Janie said, “Let’s go to the Germania and get some good beer.” So we paid and left.

I walked ahead with Phillip and Barbara. I asked Phillip when he was going to get a ship, and he said Monday. Then we talked about Rimbaud. Barbara walked along not saying anything. I thought she was sulking. Al was limping busily along, about ten feet to the rear, but Phillip paid him no attention.

We went into the Germania. Before the war this was one of the noisiest and most disagreeable places in the whole of New York City. There used to be young people sitting around in large clusters singing college songs, and fights kept breaking out in the men’s room where drunken college boys suffered from delusions
of homosexual persecution. Now there was nothing to distinguish it from any other place.

We sat at a long wood table and ordered beer, which arrived in large steins. Phillip sat opposite Barbara and he stuck his head across the table from time to time and she petted him on the hair. It was disgusting. Finally he leaned over and took her right index finger in his teeth. The nail makeup was a little loose and he peeled it off with his teeth.

Mike repeated the story about how the mate threw them off the ship. Janie belched, and everyone else was yawning or cleaning their nails or looking around.

Finally Barbara said she had to catch a train back to Manhasset, and Phillip got up to go with her to the subway. Al looked at him imploringly, like a dog that wants to accompany its master. Phillip walked away without looking at him.

Mike was telling about the sinking of the S.S.
American Star
, a troopship, in the North Atlantic. He’d heard this story from a survivor, one night in a bar in Chicago.

“It was a terrible thing,” the survivor had said. “It was all dark and you couldn’t see anything. I was on a life raft with a nigger cook, and all around me I could hear those drowning soldiers calling for their mothers.”

S
UNDAY
I
DID NOT SEE
A
L UNTIL AROUND SIX
o’clock, when I was ready for dinner. The fact is, I was not in a hurry to hear the events of Saturday evening gone over piece by piece.

Al was asleep when I knocked at his door. He said to come in. I found him lying on the bed, covered with a light blanket. The shades were drawn and the room was dark. I asked him if he was ready for dinner and he said yes. Then he closed his eyes. I sat down and turned on the light and glanced through a copy of the
New Yorker
that had been on the floor.

Al pushed the blanket aside and swung his legs to the floor. He was completely dressed, except for his shoes. He yawned and smiled. Then he walked over to the washbasin, dabbed some water on his face, and combed his hair.

I was reading a short story in the
New Yorker
. Something about two women in Schrafft’s.

Al put on a pair of cracked shoes and we went out to buy some food. We bought some hard rolls, sliced ham, cheese, apples, and milk in a delicatessen on Sixth Avenue. Then we walked back to Al’s room and started to eat.

Al said, “You know, Dennison, there’s something vampirish about that girl.”

“Barbara? Yeah. Do you notice how red her lips are and how pale her skin? Fah! ’Tis unnatural.”

Al said, “When I came into the room and saw them lying there on the couch, I had the feeling she was sucking all the life out of him.”

“There certainly isn’t much sex in that affair,” I said. “It gives me the horrors.”

“He looks pale. He doesn’t look well at all.”

We ate for a while in silence, and I was getting ready to hear Al say why did Phillip have to get involved with all these women when he obviously wasn’t in love with them and why couldn’t Phillip love him, or maybe he did already in which case he ought to show it. Al did say all that, and I went on eating.

Al continued. “I wonder if I should ship out anyway. Perhaps when he found out I was on the ship he would be glad.”

I said, “I don’t know. Do what you like. My advice is to stay here and make yourself some money. He’ll be back in five or six weeks. If you can build up a marijuana business while he’s away, you’ll have something to offer him.”

Al said, “I don’t see why money should be so important.”

I didn’t want to go into that again, so I didn’t say anything, and Al said he would definitely go down the following morning to get some marijuana seed.

We finished dinner and Al said he was going down to Washington Square. He asked me did I want to come along and I said, “No, I was just there last night.”

We said good night on 52nd Street and Al walked away toward Fifth Avenue to take the bus. I walked over to Broadway, took the IRT down to Sheridan Square, and went home.

About ten o’clock Danny Borman called and asked could he come right over. I said yes.

When I opened the door, he slid in like a jittery gangster who is in wrong with the mob. He threw down a shot of whiskey and started telling what happened last night.

He had been in a bar and some merchant seaman flashed a big roll. Danny got acquainted, and they went back to this guy’s apartment to get a bottle. When they
got there the seaman began telling Danny he would still be in the army except he was discharged for wounds he got in the Pacific. Danny said, “Yeah, sure.” The seaman said, “Oh, you don’t believe I was in the army? I’ll show you I was in the army. I got my discharge right here.” He turned around and began rummaging through a bureau drawer. So then Danny k-norcked him with the sap. The guy’s head was so hard he just shook his head and started hollering. Danny started for the door, and by this time everybody was out on the landing to see what was going on. Danny jumped out of a window on the landing, this being the second floor, and made his escape, as they say in the newspapers. But he threw away the sap.

He sat there twisting an empty jigger in his hand, looking nervous and discouraged.

I said, “Danny, would you be interested in burning down a house for two hundred dollars?”

His face brightened up and he said, “That sounds pretty good.”

So I told him about a shipyard worker I knew who figured he had got a dirty deal from some girl and her old lady and wanted to burn down their house but couldn’t do it because he would be suspected. He was willing to pay two hundred to have it done, this being a wood house in Long Island somewhere.

Danny asked, “Does she have to be in it? If so, I don’t want the job. Two hundred isn’t enough to burn a live broad, no matter what she done.”

I told him no, she wasn’t going to be at home, and the guy would tell him when she would be out.