The Log from the Sea of Cortez (18 page)

Read The Log from the Sea of Cortez Online

Authors: John Steinbeck,Richard Astro

BOOK: The Log from the Sea of Cortez
13.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
This is a good careful description by men whose main drive is toward accuracy, and they must be driven frantic as man and tide and wave undermine their work. The shifting sands of the channel; the three-inch pipe driven into the bottom; the T-head municipal pier with its lights on wooden posts, none of which has been there for some time; and, last, their conviction that the pilots cannot find the channel at night, make for their curious, cold, tactful statement. We trust these men. They are controlled, and only now and then do their nerves break and a cry of pain escape them thus, in the “Supplement” dated 1940:
 
Page 109,
Line
1,
for
“LIGHTS”
read
“LIGHT”
and for
“TWO LIGHTS ARE” read “WHEN THE CANNERY IS IN OPERATION, A LIGHT IS.”
 
Or again:
 
Page 149, Line 2, after
“line” add: “two piers project inward from this mole, affording berths for vessels and, except alongside these two piers, the mole is foul with debris and wrecked cranes. ”
 
These coast pilots are constantly exasperated; they are not happy men. When anything happens they are blamed, and their writing takes on an austere tone because of it. No matter how hard they work, the restlessness of nature and the carelessness of man are always two jumps ahead of them.
We ran happily up under Prieta Point as suggested, and dropped anchor and put up the American flag and under it the yellow quarantine flag. We would have liked to fire a gun, but we had only the ten-gauge shotgun, and its hammer was rusted down. It was only for a show of force anyway; we had never intended it for warlike purposes. And then we sat and waited. The site was beautiful—the highland of Prieta Point and a tower on the hillside. In the distance we could see the beach of La Paz, and it really looked like a Hollywood production, the fine, low buildings close down to the water and trees flanking them and a colored bandstand on the water’s edge. The little canoes of Nayarit sailed by, and the sea was ruffled with a fair breeze. We took some color motion pictures of the scene, but they didn’t come out either.
After what seemed a very long time, the little launch mentioned in the
Coast Pilot
started for us. But it had no white flag with the letter “P.” Like the municipal pier, that was gone. The pilot, an elderly man in a business suit and a dark hat, came stiffly aboard. He had great dignity. He refused a drink, accepted cigarettes, took his position at the wheel, and ordered us on grandly. He looked like an admiral in civilian clothes. He governed Tex with a sensitive hand—a gentle push forward against the air meant “ahead.” A flattened hand patting downward signified “slow.” A quick thumb over the shoulder, “reverse.” He was not a talkative man, and he ran us through the channel with ease, hardly scraping us at all, and signaled our anchor down 250 yards westward of the municipal pier—if there had been one—the choicest place in the harbor.
La Paz grew in fascination as we approached. The square, iron-shuttered colonial houses stood up right in back of the beach with rows of beautiful trees in front of them. It is a lovely place. There is a broad promenade along the water lined with benches, named for dead residents of the city, where one may rest oneself.
Soon after we had anchored, the port captain, customs man, and agent came aboard. The captain read our papers, which complimented us rather highly, and was so impressed that he immediately assigned us an armed guard—or, rather, three shifts of armed guards-to protect us from theft. At first we did not like this, since we had to pay these men, but we soon found the wisdom of it. For we swarmed with visitors from morning to night; little boys clustered on us like flies, in the rigging and on the deck. And although we were infested and crawling with very poor people and children, we lost nothing; and this in spite of the fact that there were little gadgets lying about that any one of us would have stolen if we had had the chance. The guards simply kept our visitors out of the galley and out of the cabin. But we do not think they prevented theft, for in other ports where we had no guard nothing was stolen.
The guards, big pleasant men armed with heavy automatics, wore uniforms that were starched and clean, and they were helpful and sociable. They ate with us and drank coffee with us and told us many valuable things about the town. And in the end we gave each of them a carton of cigarettes, which seemed valuable to them. But they were the reverse of what is usually thought and written of Mexican soldiers—they were clean, efficient, and friendly.
With the port captain came the agent, probably the finest invention of all. He did everything for us, provisioned us, escorted us, took us to dinner, argued prices for us in local stores, warned us about some places and recommended others. His fee was so small that we doubled it out of pure gratitude.
As soon as we were cleared, Sparky and Tiny and Tex went ashore and disappeared, and we did not see them until late that night, when they came back with the usual presents: shawls and carved cow-horns and colored handkerchiefs. They were so delighted with the exchange (which was then six pesos for a dollar) that we were very soon deeply laden with curios. There were five huge stuffed sea-turtles in one bunk alone, and Japanese toys, combs from New England, Spanish shawls from New Jersey, machetes from Sheffield and New York; but all of them, from having merely lived a while in La Paz, had taken on a definite Mexican flavor. Tony, who does not trust foreigners, stayed aboard, but later even he went ashore for a while.
The tide was running out and the low shore east of the town was beginning to show through the shallow water. We gathered our paraphernalia and started for the beach, expecting and finding a fauna new to us. Here on the flats the water is warm, very warm, and there is no wave-shock. It would be strange indeed if, with few exceptions of ubiquitous animals, there should not be a definite change. The base of this flat was of rubble in which many knobs and limbs of old coral were imbedded, making an easy hiding place for burrowing animals. In rubber boots we moved over the flat uncovered by the dropping tide; a silty sand made the water obscure when a rock or a piece of coral was turned over. And as always when one is collecting, we were soon joined by a number of small boys. The very posture of search, the slow movement with the head down, seems to draw people. “What did you lose?” they ask.
“Nothing.”
“Then what do you search for?” And this is an embarrassing question. We search for something that will seem like truth to us; we search for understanding; we search for that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life; we search for the relations of things, one to another, as this young man searches for a warm light in his wife’s eyes and that one for the hot warmth of fighting. These little boys and young men on the tide flat do not even know that they search for such things too. We say to them, “We are looking for curios, for certain small animals.”
Then the little boys help us to search. They are ragged and dark and each one carries a small iron harpoon. It is the toy of La Paz, owned and treasured as tops or marbles are in America. They poke about the rocks with their little harpoons, and now and then a lazing fish which blunders too close feels the bite of the iron.
There is a small ghost shrimp which lives on these flats, an efficient little fellow who lives in a burrow. He moves very rapidly, and is armed with claws which can pinch painfully. He retires backward into his hole, so that to come at him from above is to invite his weapons. The little boys solved the problem for us. We offered ten centavos for each one they took. They dug into the rubble and old coral until they got behind the ghost shrimp in his burrow, then, prodding, they drove him outraged from his hole. Then they banged him good to reduce his pinching power. We refused to buy the banged-up ones—they had to get us lively ones. Small boys are the best collectors in the world. Soon they worked out a technique for catching the shrimps with only an occasionally pinched finger, and then the ten-centavo pieces began running out, and an increasing cloud of little boys brought us specimens. Small boys have such sharp eyes, and they are quick to notice deviation. Once they know you are generally curious, they bring amazing things. Perhaps we only practice an extension of their urge. It is easy to remember when we were small and lay on our stomachs beside a tide pool and our minds and eyes went so deeply into it that size and identity were lost, and the creeping hermit crab was our size and the tiny octopus a monster. Then the waving algae covered us and we hid under a rock at the bottom and leaped out at fish. It is very possible that we, and even those who probe space with equations, simply extend this wonder.
Among small-boy groups there is usually a stupid one who understands nothing, who brings dull things, rocks and pieces of weed, and pretends that he knows what he does. When we think of La Paz, it is always of the small boys that we think first, for we had many dealings with them on many levels.
The profile of this flat was easy to get. The ghost shrimps, called
“langusta, ”
were quite common; our enemy the stinging worm was about to make us careful of our fingers; the big brittle-stars were there under the old coral, but not in such great masses as at Espíritu Santo. A number of sponges clung to the stones, and small decorated crabs skulked in the interstices. Beautiful purple polyclad worms crawled over lawns of purple tunicates; the giant oyster-like hacha
27
was not often found, but we took a few specimens. There were several growth forms of the common corals
28
; the larger and handsomer of the two slim asteroids
29
; anemones of at least three types; some club urchins and snails and many hydroids.
Some of the exposed snails were so masked with forests of algae and hydroids that they were invisible to us. We found a worm-like fixed gastropod,
30
many bivalves, including the long peanut-shaped boring clam
31
; large brilliant-orange nudibranchs; hermit crabs; mantids ; flatworms which seemed to flow over the rocks like living gelatin; sipunculids; and many limpets. There were a few sun-stars, but not so many or so large as they had been at Cape San Lucas.
The little boys ran to and fro with full hands, and our buckets and tubes were soon filled. The ten-centavo pieces had long run out, and ten little boys often had to join a club whose center and interest was a silver peso, to be changed and divided later. They seemed to trust one another for the division. And certainly they felt there was no chance of their being robbed. Perhaps they are not civilized and do not know how valuable money is. The poor little savages seem not to have learned the great principle of cheating one another.
The population of small boys at La Paz is tremendous, and we had business dealings with a good part of it. Hardly had we returned to the Western Flyer and begun to lay out our specimens when we were invaded. Word had spread that there were crazy people in port who gave money for things a boy could pick up on the rocks. We were more than invaded—we were deluged with small boys bearing specimens. They came out in canoes, in flat-boats, some even swam out, and all of them carried specimens. Some of the things they brought we wanted and some we did not want. There were hurt feelings about this, but no bitterness. Battalions of boys swarmed back to the flats and returned again. The second day little boys came even from the hills, and they brought every conceivable living thing. If we had not sailed the second night they would have swamped the boat. Meanwhile, in our dealings on shore, more small boys were involved. They carried packages, ran errands, directed us (mostly wrongly), tried to anticipate our wishes; but one boy soon emerged. He was not like the others. His shoulders were not slender, but broad, and there was a hint about his face and expression that seemed Germanic or perhaps Anglo-Saxon. Whereas the other little boys lived for the job and the payment, this boy created jobs and looked ahead. He did errands that were not necessary, he made himself indispensable. Late at night he waited, and the first dawn saw him on our deck. Further, the other small boys seemed a little afraid of him, and gradually they faded into the background and left him in charge.
Some day this boy will be very rich and La Paz will be proud of him, for he will own the things other people must buy or rent. He has the look and the method of success. Even the first day success went to his head, and he began to cheat us a little. We did not mind, for it is a good thing to be cheated a little; it causes a geniality and can be limited fairly easily. His method was simple. He performed a task, and then, getting each of us alone, he collected for the job so that he was paid several times. We decided we would not use him any more, but the other little boys decided even better than we. He disappeared, and later we saw him in the town, his nose and lips heavily bandaged. We had the story from another little boy. Our financial wizard told the others that he was our sole servant and that we had said that they weren’t to come around any more. But they discovered the lie and waylaid him and beat him very badly. He wasn’t a very brave little boy, but he will be a rich one because he wants to. The others wanted only sweets or a new handkerchief, but the aggressive little boy wishes to be rich, and they will not be able to compete with him.
On the evening of our sailing we had rather a sad experience with another small boy. We had come ashore for a stroll, leaving our boat tied to a log on the beach. We walked up the curiously familiar streets and ended, oddly enough, in a bar to have a glass of beer. It was a large bar with high ceilings, and nearly deserted. As we sat sipping our beer we saw a ferocious face scowling at us. It was a very small, very black Indian boy, and the look in his eyes was one of hatred. He stared at us so long and so fiercely that we finished our glasses and got up to go. But outside he fell into step with us, saying nothing. We walked back through the softly lighted streets, and he kept pace. But near the beach he began to pant deeply. Finally we got to the beach and as we were about to untie the skiff he shouted in panic,
“Cinco centavos!”
and stepped back as from a blow. And then it seemed that we could see almost how it was. We have been the same way trying to get a job. Perhaps the father of this little boy said, “Stupid one, there are strangers in the town and they are throwing money away. Here sits your father with a sore leg and you do nothing. Other boys are becoming rich, but you, because of your sloth, are not taking advantage of this miracle. Señor Ruiz had a cigar this afternoon and a glass of beer at the
cantina
because his fine son is not like you. When have you known me, your father, to have a cigar? Never. Now go and bring back some little piece of money.”

Other books

35 Miles from Shore by Emilio Corsetti III
The Delaneys At Home by Anne Brooke
Graceful Mischief by Melinda Barron
A Bride After All by Kasey Michaels
Lord Ashford's Wager by Marjorie Farrell
Bad Blood by Chuck Wendig